JDHN  T  HUGHES  ^^^^==- 

MEMDRIRL  CDLLEQTIDN, 


LEADERS 

OF 

PUBLIC  OPESnO]^  IN  lEELAOT) 

VOL.  II. 
HENRY  FLOOD.  HENRY  GRATTAN 


WORKS  BY  THE 
RT.    HON.  WILLIAM    EDWARD    HARTPOLE    LECKY. 


HISTORY     OF     ENGLAND     IN     THE     EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY, 
LiBBARY  Edition.     8  vols.    8vo. 
Cabinet  Edition.    ENGLAND.    7  vols.    Crown  Svo.     IRELAND. 

5  vols.    Crown  Svo. 

LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND.     2  vols. 
Crown  Svo. 

HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS  FROM  AUGUSTUS 
TO  CHARLEMAGNE.    2  vols.    Crown  Svo. 

HISTORY   OF   THE   RISE   AND    INFLUENCE    OF    THE 
SPIRIT  OF  RATIONALISM  IN  EUROPE.     2  vols.    Crown  Svo. 

DEMOCRACY  AND  LIBERTY.    2  vols.     Crown  Svo. 

THE  MAP  OF  LIFE :  Conduct  and  Character.    Crown  Svo. 

POEMS.     Feap.  8vo. 


LEADERS 


OF 


PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


BY 
WILLIAM  EDWARD  HARTPOLE  LECKY 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES 

VOL.  II. 


NEW  EDITION 

BOSTON  CuLll:_  c.uARy 

i.     CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 
LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND  CO. 

91  AND  93  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON  AND  BOMBAY 

1903 


Copyright,  1903 
Bt  Longmans,  Green,  and  Co. 


All  Eights  Reserved 


9  0  Fi  4  4  0 


Tttss  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Co. 
Astor  Plice,  New  York 


-N 


CONTENTS 


OF 


THE   SECOND   VOLUME 


DANIEL  O'CONNELL 

O'Connell's  first  public  appearance 

His  early  life  and  surroundings    . 

Political  opinions  of  his  family     . 

His  rare  powers  of  work       .... 

His  pre-eminence  as  a  criminal  advocate 

His  defence  of  the  violence  of  his  language 

Position  of  Catholic  lawyers  in  Ireland 

The  Magee  case 

Saurin's  letter  to  Norbury     .... 

O'Connell's  competitors  at  the  Bar. — Professional  income 

Early  political  aspirations    .... 

The  Catholic  Committee  in  1808.— O'Connell  on 

Letters  of  Quarantotti  and  Litta 

O'Connell's  'ulterior  object' 

Discontent  with  the  Union  .... 

Attempts  to  evade  the  Convention  Act 

The  Catholic  cause  in  Parliament,  1812-1815 

Duel  with  D'Esterre 

Proposed  duel  with  Peel       .... 
Extravagance  of  O'Connell's  language 
George  IV.  in  Ireland           .... 
Revival  of  the  Catholic  question   in   1821.  —  O'Connell's 
letter      


the  veto 


PAGB 

1 
2 
4 
6 
7 
13 
ib. 
14 
16 
17 
18 
19 
21 
25 
26 
27 
30 
32 
33 
35 
38 

41 


VI         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION   IN  IRELAND 

PAGE 

Catholic  Bill,  1821.— O'Connell's  opposition  to  it        .         ,  42 

His  attitude  to  Lord  Wellesley's  Administration        .        .  43 

Distress  and  disturbance  in  Ireland,  1821-1822    ...  44 

Aggravated  by  the  tithe  system 47 

Changes  in  the  tenure  of  land. — Diminution  of  leases        .  49 

The  Sub-letting  Act,  1826 52 

Lawlessness  of  the  country. — Measures  to  combat  it    ,        .  ih. 
Tithe  Composition  Act,    1826.  —  Establishment  of  Petty 

Sessions 57 

O'Connell  brings  the  priests  into  politics      ....  58 

New  Catholic  Association 59 

Eloquence  of  Shell  and  O'Connell 60 

Prosecutions  by  Plunket 64 

Catholic  question  in  1824 65 

O'Connell's  deputation  to  London,  1825       ....  66 
His  conciliatory  attitude. — Payment  of  priests. — 40s.  free- 
holders    67 

Duke  of  York  defeats  the  Catholic  Bill        .         .         .         .71 

Election  of  1826.— Revolt  of  the  40s.  freeholders.— Influ- 
ence of  the  priests          .......  75 

Triumph  and  power  of  O'Connell. — His  letter  to  Plunket    .  79 

Political  changes  in  1827 80 

Balance  of  opinion  in  the  House  of  Commons      ...  81 

Repeal  of  the  Test  Act 82 

Supported  by  O'Connell ih. 

The  Wellington  Ministry.— The  Clare  Election,  1828  .         .  83 

Triumph  of  Catholic  Emancipation. — O'Connell's  position  .  86 

Estimates  of  O'Connell  in  England 89 

Greville 90 

O'Connell  in  Parliament. — Anticipations  of  his  failure    '    .  91 

Summary  of  his  parliamentary  career           ....  92 

PART   II 

O'Connell's  conduct  after  emancipation  the  turning  point 

of  his  life 97 

Motives  that  governed  him ih. 


CONTENTS  OF  THE  SECOND  VOLUME  Vll 

PAGE 

His  hostility  to  Wellington's  Government   ....  98 
Danger  of  more  violent  men  taking  the  lead        .         .         .  101 
Remaining  grievances. — O'Connell's  desire  for  repeal  agi- 
tation       103 

Opposition  to  it .         .  104 

Letter  to  the  people  of  Ireland,  January  1830      .        .        .  109 
New  political  associations  formed  and  suppressed        .         .111 

Anglesey  Viceroy. — Stanley  Chief  Secretary        .         .         .  112 

Prosecution  of  O'Connell. — He  recommends  a  run  on  gold  .  113 

The  O'Connell  tribute 114 

O'Connell's  support  of  parliamentary  reform       .        .        .118 

Dislike  to  the  government  of  Grey 120 

The  Irish  Reform  Bill 121 

Irish  representation  before  emancipation     ....  123 

Deterioration  after  emancipation. — Peel  on  obstruction       .  124 

Irish  education. — '  Kildare  Street  Society '  .         .         .         .  126 

National  system  of  education 128 

Tithes  Composition  Act. — O'Connell's  views  about  tithes    .  131 

The  tithe  war 133 

Agrarian  crime. — The  great  clearances        ....  135 

Coercion  Act  of  1833. — O'Connell's  opposition  to  it     .         .  137 

Changes  in  administration. — Wellesley  Viceroy  .         .         .  142 

Vestry  Act  repealed. — Church  Temporalities  Act        .        .  ih. 

Relations  of  O'Connell  to  the  ministry        ....  143 

Repeal  brought  before  Parliament,  1834       ....  146 

Decline  of  the  Whig  government. — Stanley's  secession        .  147 

Political  clauses  of  the  Coercion  Act. — Conduct  of  Littleton  150 
Resignation  of  Grey. — First  Melbourne  Ministry         .        .152 

Dismissal  by  the  King. — Peel  called  to  office       .        .        .  153 
New    Parliament,    February  1835. — O'Connell    holds  the 

balance  of  power 154 

The  tithe  question ih. 

The  Appropriation  Clause. — Melbourne  regains  office .        .155 

O'Connell  supports  the  Government 156 

Declines  office. — Temporary  abandonment  of  repeal    .        .  159 

Opening  of  the  Irish  municipalities 165 

O'Connell  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin 167 


Viii      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

PAGE 

Tithes  Commutation  Act 168 

The  Irish  poor  law.— O'Connell's  dislike  of  it       .        .         .  172 

Its  ultimate  effects 182 

O'Connell  on  state-aided  emigration 184 

His  occasional  advocacy  of  unpopular  causes. — Trade  unions  185 

His  agrarian  politics 186 

Taxation  of  absentees. — Reform  of  grand  juries          .        .  196 

O'Connell  as  a  landlord 198 

His  life  at  Darrynane 200 

Two  sides  of  his  character. — His  personal  charm          .         .  203 

His  speeches  in  Ireland 205 

Dislike  of  him  in  England 207 

Never  really  a  revolutionist. — Enthusiasm  for  Queen  Vic- 
toria         210 

Maintains  that  the  Irish  Parliament  could  be  restored  by 

royal  prerogative 212 

Views  about  an  Upper  Chamber. — Violent  language   .         .213 
Believes  that  England  is  tending  to  revolution. — The  Na- 
tional Debt 214 

Dislike  of  English  character. — Relation  to  parties       .        .  215 

Sympathy  with  the  Mulgrave  Administration      .         .        .  216 

General  disappointment  with  the  "Whigs      ....  217 

Grocers'  licenses ib. 

Great    despondency. —Pecuniary    troubles. — Longing    for 

repeal 218 

*  Memoir  on  Irish  History.' — Alliance  with  MacHale   .         .  221 

Preparations  for  a  new  repeal  agitation        ....  222 

Peel  again  minister. — O'Connell  ejected  from  Dublin          .  225 

Character  of  the  new  agitation. — Expedition  to  Belfast       .  226 

Henry  Cooke ib. 

O'Connell  on  religious  freedom. — Liberal  Catholicism.         .  229 

Influence  of  the  Church  on  his  reputation    ....  233 

Sincerity  of  his  Catholicism 235 

His  union  with  the  priests. — Their  position  in  Ireland        .  237 

Their  adhesion  to  repeal.-— Letter  to  Lord  Shrewsbury        .  239 

Increasing  money  difficulties 241 

Revived  agitation. — The  Corporation  debate       .        .        .  242 


CONTENTS  OF  THE  SECOND  VOLUME 


IX 


The  monster  meetings,  1843         .... 

Foreign  interest  in  Ireland 

Alarm  of  the  Government. — Military  preparations 
Dismissal  of  repeal  magistrates. — Language  of  Peel 
The  Kepeal  Association  rapidly  spreading. — Defiant 

guage  of  O'Connell         .... 
Difficulties  of  the  position  of  Peel 
Suppression  of  the  Clontarf  meeting    . 

The  State  trial 

Condenmation  and  imprisonment  of  O'Connell 
Irish  verdict  reversed  on  appeal  by  the  Lords 

Exultation  in  Ireland 

O'Connell's  speeches  on  his  release 


lan- 


PAGE 

244 
253 

ih. 
254 

256 
261 
263 
265 
270 
273 
ib. 
273 


PART  III 

o'connell's  last  days 

O'Connell  suddenly  aged 274 

Federation 275 

Peel's  administration  of  Ireland. — Devon  Commission         .  278 

*  Charitable  Trust  Act ' ih. 

Increased  endowment  of  Maynooth 279 

The  Queen's  colleges 280 

O'Connell  denounces  them 283 

Their  condemnation  by  Rome 284 

Their  later  history. — O'Connell's  views  on  education  .         .  ib. 

Rise  and  character  of  the  Young  Ireland  Party  .        .        .  288 

Connection  with  Carlyle 289 

Their  literary  work ib. 

Tendencies  of  Irish  literature. — Irish  Toryism     .        .        .  291 

Young  Ireland. — Alienation  from  O'Connell        .        .        .  294 

Dispute  about  the  Queen's  Colleges. — 'The  Nation'    .        .  295 

Physical  force. — Mitchel 297 

O'Connell  drives  the  Young  Irelanders  from  the  Repeal 

Association 303 

Their  Hostility  to  him.— The  people  with  O'Connell    .        .  304 


X  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

FAGB 

O'Connell's  desire  to  abandon  the  repeal  agitation       .        .  307 

Possible  Whig  alliance 310 

Young  Ireland  opposition. — Independent  opposition  .  .311 
Resignation  of  Peel,  December  1845. — O'Connell  prepared 

to  support  Russell 312 

Failure  of  Whig  attempt  to  form  a  ministry. — Agrarian 

crime 313 

Fall  of  Peel  on  the  Crimes  Bill. — The  Irish  famine  .  .  ih. 
O'Connell's  proposals  for  meeting  it.— Peel's  measures. — 

Free  trade 317 

Alliance  of  O'Connell  with  the  Whig  government       .         .  318 

Growing  severity  of  the  famine. — O'Connell's  last  days       .  321 

Dies  at  Genoa,  May  15,  1847 325 

Index 337 


LEADERS    OF    PUBLIC   OPINION 
IN   IRELAND 


DANIEL  O'CONNELL 

While  the  Union  was  under  discussion  in  the  Irish 
Parliament  no  class  of  persons  exerted  themselves  more 
energetically  in  opposing  it  than  the  Dublin  lawyers. 
Among  the  meetings  held  for  this  purpose  there  was 
one  which  assumed  a  peculiar  significance  from  its 
being  composed  entirely  of  Koman  Catholics.  They 
assembled  to  protest  against  the  assertion  that  the 
Eoman  Catholics,  as  a  body,  were  favourable  to  the 
measure;  to  express  their  opinion  that  it  would  exer- 
cise an  injurious  influence  upon  the  struggle  for  eman- 
cipation; and  to  declare  that,  were  it  otherwise,  they 
did  not  desire  to  purchase  that  boon  at  the  expense  of 
the  independence  of  the  nation.  JMilitary  law  was  then 
reigning,  and  a  body  of  troops,  under  Major  Sirr,  were 
present  at  the  Exchange  to  watch  the  proceedings.  It 
was  under  these  rather  trying  circumstances  that  a 
young  lawyer,  'trembling,'  as  he  afterwards  said,  'at 
the  sound  of  his  own  voice,'  rose  to  make  his  maiden 
speech.  He  delivered  a  short  address  against  the 
Union,  which,  if  it  contained  no  very  original  or  strik- 
ing views,  had  at  least  the  merit  of  exhibiting  the  com- 
mon arguments  in  a  clear  and  convincing  light;  and 
he  shortly  after  hurried  to  a  newspaper  office  to  deposit 
a  copy  for  publication.     This  young  lawyer  was  Daniel 

VOL.  II.  1 


2  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

O'Connell,  the  great  Irish  agitator.  I  confess  that  it 
is  not  without  some  hesitation  that  I  approach  this  part 
of  my  subject,  for  the  difficulty  of  painting  the  char- 
acter of  O'Connell  with  fairness  and  impartiality  can 
hardly  be  exaggerated.  '  Never,  perhaps,'  as  has  been 
said,  *  was  there  a  man  at  once  so  hated  and  so  loved; ' 
and  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  public  man  of  his 
time  was  the  object  of  so  much  extravagant  praise  and 
blame.  On  the  whole,  however,  the  latter  greatly  pre- 
ponderates. ^For  many  years  almost  the  entire  press  of 
England,  and  a  large  section  of  that  of  Ireland,  cease- 
lessly denounced  him.  No  English  political  party  cor- 
dially liked  him,  and  in  Parliament  he  had  to  bear 
alone  the  assaults  of  statesmen  and  orators  of  the  most 
varied  opinions.  By  the  more  violent  Irish  Protestants 
he  was  regarded  with  feelings  of  mingled  hatred  and 
terror  that  almost  amounted  to  a  superstition;  and  the 
failure  of  the  last  great  struggle  of  his  life,  and  the  dis- 
astrous condition  of  the  country  at  the  time  of  his 
death,  have  been  very  injurious  to  his  reputation. 

Daniel  O'Connell  was  born  in  -the  county  of  Kerry 
in  the  year  1775.  His  family  was  one  which  had  for  a 
long  time  occupied  a  considerable  position  among  the 
Catholics  of  the  county,  which  was  noted  for  its  national 
and  Catholic  feeling,  and,  it  must  be  added,  greatly 
addicted  to  smuggling.  It  was  in  after  years  remarked 
as  a  curious  coincidence  that  its  crest  bore  the  proud 
motto  ^  Oculus  O'Connell  Salus  Ilibernise.'  During 
his  boyhood  the  penal  laws  were  still  for  the  most  part 
unrepealed,  though  much  relaxed  in  their  stringency, 
and  the  poorer  Roman  Catholics  were  sunk  in  that  state 
of  degradation  which  compulsory  ignorance  necessarily 
produces,  while  the  richer  drew  their  opinions,  with 
their  education,  from  France.  After  a  short  period  at 
a  school  at  Cork  O'Connell  spent  about  a  year  and  a 


EARLY  MANHOOD  3 

half  at  St.  Omer,  where  he  rose  to  the  first  class  and 
gained  several  premiums,  and  where  the  principal  pre- 
dicted that  he  would  afterwards  distinguish  himself, 
and  he  then  remained  for  a  few  months  at  the  English 
college  at  Douaj.  The  Revolution  had  at  this  time 
shattered  the  French  Church  and  Crown,  and  the  minds 
of  all  men  were  violently  agitated  in  its  favour  or 
against  it.  O'Connell  was  strongly  hostile.  Like  the 
members  of  most  Irish  families  that  had  adhered  to 
their  religion  during  the  penal  lav/s,  he  was  deeply 
attached  to  it,  j)olitically  and  through  feelings  of  hon- 
our, if  not  from  higher  motives.  The  associations  of 
his  college  were  necessarily  clerical;  and  some  of  the 
revolutionary  soldiers,  in  passing  through  Douay,  had 
heaped  many  insults  on  the  students. 

On  his  return  to  Ireland  he  formed  a  friendship 
with  some  of  the  United  Irishmen,  with  whose  ostensi- 
ble object  of  procuring  Catholic  Emancipation  he  nat- 
urally sympathised,  and  he  was  actually  enrolled  in  the 
body.  There  is,  however,  no  good  reason  to  believe 
that  he  was  involved  in  their  illegal  conspiracies,  and 
to  the  end  of  his  life  he  spoke  with  detestation  and 
contempt  of  the  rebellion  of  1798.  It  was  in  this  year 
that  he  was  called  to  the  Bar,  and  when  a  few  years 
later  Emmet's  rebellion  broke  out  he  became  a  member 
of  a  yeomanry  corps  which  the  lawyers  had  formed. 
He  was  at  that  time,  as  he  afterwards  confessed, 
'almost  a  Tory.'  In  1798  he  went  through  a  danger- 
ous illness,  and  he  has  himself  related  that  Avhen  he 
believed  he  was  dying  he  repeated  to  himself  those  fine 
lines  in  '  Douglas  ' : 

Unknown  I  die.    No  tongue  shall  speak  of  me; 
Some  noble  spirits  judging  by  themselves 
May  yet  conjecture  what  I  might  have  proved, 
And  think  life  only  wanting  to  my  fame. 


4  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

One  lesson  which  O'Connell  learnt  from  the  rebel- 
lion and  its  sequels  was  never  forgotten.  It  was  an 
utter  disbelief  in  the  use  of  physical  force  in  Irish  poli- 
tics; a  distrust  of  all  secret  and  illegal  conspiracy;  an 
extreme  dread  of  the  spirit  and  tendencies  of  the  French 
Revolution.  No  one  spoke  with  more  absolute  con- 
tempt of  the  secret  plottings  of  the  United  Irishmen  or 
of  the  crazy  rebellion  of  Robert  Emmet. 

His  foreign  education,  and  especially  his  command 
of  the  French  language,  helped  him  considerably  in 
later  life  when  he  had  come  to  be  regarded  by  great 
bodies  of  his  co-religionists  on  the  Continent  as  the 
foremost  champion  of  his  Church,  and  when  his  career 
had  in  consequence  assumed  something  of  a  cosmopoli- 
tan aspect.  It  certainly  did  not  prevent  him  from  re- 
maining the  most  typical  of  Irishmen,  yet  even  in  his 
manner  some  slight  trace  of  his  French  education 
might  be  occasionally  detected.  The  late  Lady  Stanley 
of  Alderley — a  singularly  acute  judge  of  men — once 
described  to  me  O'Connell  as  she  knew  him  on  the  rare 
occasions  when  he  appeared  in  general  English  society 
— graceful,  courteous,  modestly  retiring,  and  in  his 
demeanour  towards  ladies  extremely,  but  according  to 
English  notions  somewhat  too  elaborately,  deferential. 
*  It  was  exactly,^  she  said,  'the  manner  of  a  French 
abbe.' 

His  family,  like  a  large  number  of  the  old  Catholic 
gentry  of  Ireland,  were  of  the  strongest  type  of  an  old- 
world  Toryism.  Shut  out  from  all  public  affairs  in 
their  own  country,  they  lived  retired  country  lives  in 
which  farming,  sporting,  smuggling,  and  the  cattle 
fairs  of  Limerick  and  Tralee  played  the  leading  part. 
They  were  surrounded  by  a  wild,  Irish-speaking  ten- 
antry, who  looked  up  to  them  with  much  the  same 
feelings  as  a  Highland  clan  to  its  chief,  and  their  wider 


POLITICS  OF  O'CONNELL'S  FAMILY  5 

sympatliies  were  chiefly  with  the  interests  of  the  Church 
and  of  the  old  monarchies  of  the  Continent  in  whose 
armies  they  had  been  largely  represented.  Their  ideas 
were  those  of  the  Ancien  Regime,  and  both  politically 
and  religiously  they  looked  with  horror  on  the  Revolu- 
tion. A  namesake  and  uncle  of  Daniel  O'Connell  had 
passed  the  greater  part  of  a  long  life  in  the  Irish  Bri- 
gade in  the  French  service,  had  distinguished  himself 
on  many  battlefields,  and  when  the  Eevolution  broke 
out  had  been  one  of  those  who  followed  the  fortunes  of 
the  exiled  princes.  He  took  a  large  part  in  the  nego- 
tiations which  ended  by  re-forming  the  old  Irish  Bri- 
gade under  the  British  flag;  when  the  wars  of  the 
Revolution  were  terminated  he  re-entered  the  French 
service  under  the  government  of  the  Restoration,  but, 
true  to  his  Legitimist  sentiments,  he  refused  to  take 
the  oath  of  fidelity  to  Louis  Phili23pe  after  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1830.  His  curious  and  checkered  life  has  lately 
been  written,  and  throws  much  light  on  the  family  his- 
tory of  the  O'Connells.  It  shows  that  while  the  old 
general  naturally  sympathised  with  the  action  of  his 
nejDhew  in  obtaining  Catholic  emancipation,  he  utterly 
disliked  his  democratic  tendencies,  regarded  his  project 
of  repealing  the  Union  as  ruinous  folly,  and  cordially 
approved  of  any  amount  of  exceptional  and  coercive 
legislation  in  Ireland  that  was  really  necessary  to  en- 
force obedience  to  the  law.  At  the  time  of  the  Union 
Kerry  was  one  of  the  counties  that  were  in  favour  of 
that  measure.  The  Knight  of  Kerry,  who  was  one  of 
its  representatives,  belonged  to  a  family  who  had  long 
been  hereditary  friends  of  the  O'Connells.  He  was  a 
warm  advocate  of  the  Union,  and  declares  that  it  was 
popular  *  among  the  gentry  of  both  persuasions  and  the 
Roman  Catholic  population  of  Munster  and  Con- 
naught.'    ^  Having  accepted  office/  he  says,  'as  a  sup- 


6  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

porter  of  the  Union,  I  went  to  two  elections  pending 
the  measure,  and  was  returned  without  o^oposition  in 
a  county  where  the  Roman  Catholic  interest  greatly 
preponderated,  and  a  declaration  almost  unanimous  in 
favour  of  the  Union  proceeded  from  the  county  of 
Kerry.'  He  adds,  *  One  of  my  most  strenuous  sup- 
porters in  bringing  forward  that  declaration  was  Mr. 
Maurice  O'Connell — a  gentleman  of  wealth,  respecta- 
bili  ty,  and  decided  loyalty,  uncle  of  Mr.  Daniel  0 '  Connell ; 
and  my  most  active  partisan  on  the  occasion  was  Mr. 
John  O'Connell,  brother  of  Mr.  Daniel  O'Connell/ ' 
The  subject  of  this  biography  took  from  the  first  a 
very  different  line,  and  he  soon  showed  himself  capable 
of  acting  with  equal  power  both  in  the  sphere  of  his 
own  profession  and  in  that  of  political  life.  With  all 
the  impulsiveness,  the  quickness,  the  tact,  and  the  ver- 
satility of  the  Celtic  temperament,  O'Connell  combined 
most  eminently  other  qualities  which  are  more  com- 
monly associated  with  the  Teutonic  type — the  power  of 
long,  plodding,  and  concentrated  work — a  steady  am- 
bition, never  losing  sight  of  its  aim;  a  firm,  practical 
grasp  of  the  realities  of  things.  Few  men  have  had  a 
greater  capacity  for  work.  During  long  years  he  was 
habitually  in  his  study  before  sunrise,  while  his  days 
were  spent  in  incessant  practice  in  the  courts,  and 
most  of  his  evenings  in  political  meetings.  The  com- 
paratively simple  conditions  of  Irish  ]3roperty  and  the 
nature  of  the  cases  that  most  frequently  come  before . 
Irish  law  courts  are  not  favourable  to  the  formation  of 
a  school  of  great  technical  lawyers  like  those  whose  de- 
cisions are  quoted  as  guiding  lights  in  the  more  abstruse 
branches  of  English  law,  and  it  is  not  probable  that 
O'Connell  under  any  circumstances  would  have  taken 

*  A  Letter  to  Sir  R.  Peel  on  the  Endoivment  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  Ireland,  by  the  Knight  of  Kerry  (1845),  p.  10. 


THE  IRISH  LAWCOURTS  7 

his  place  among  them;  but  the  most  competent  judges 
in  England  as  well  as  in  Ireland  recognised  in  him  an 
eminently  sound  and  well-informed  lawyer,  excellently 
instructed  in  the  theory  as  well  as  in  the  practice  of  the 
law;  a  consummate  master  of  its  evasive  subtleties,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  man  v/hose  dispassionate  opinion  on 
any  legal  question  was  entitled  to  great  weight.  Be- 
hind the  noisier,  more  brilliant  and  more  popular 
aspects  of  his  character  this  basis  of  solid  attainments 
always  remained. 

It  was,  however,  as  an  advocate,  and  especially  as 
a  criminal  advocate,  that  he  was  most  distinguished, 
and  he  had  every  quality  that  would  place  him  in  the 
first  rank  in  a  country  like  Ireland,  where  the  admin- 
istration of  justice  could  never  be  carried  on  in  quite 
the  same  spirit  as  in  England.  In  England,  with  the 
rarest  exceptions,  public  opinion  in  all  classes  is  on  the 
side  of  the  law,  and  all  classes  desire  the  detection, 
conviction,  and  punishment  of  criminals.  In  Ireland 
great  departments  of  crime  are  thoroughly  organised ; 
looked  upon  as  of  the  nature  of  war;  supported  by  the 
whole  force  of  popular  opinion;  screened  from  punish- 
ment by  the  most  deliberate  perjury  or  the  most  savage 
and  systematic  intimidatiou  of  witnesses.  The  fre- 
quent impossibility  of  obtaining  convictions  in  a  dis- 
turbed county  for  certain  classes  of  crime  in  spite  of 
the  clearest  evidence;  the  extreme  difiiculty  of  obtain- 
ing evidence  even  when  crimes  are  committed  in  open 
daylight  and  to  the  knowledge  of  numbers;  the  numer- 
ous cases  of  the  murder  of  witnesses,  or  even  of  the 
families  of  witnesses;  the  great  sums  which  Govern- 
ments have  been  compelled  to  pay  in  order  to  transport 
honest  witnesses  or  their  families  beyond  the  range  of 
popular  vengeance,  are  all  signs  of  a  diseased  com- 
munity in  which  the  normal  methods  of  administering 


8  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

justice  often  fail  to  work.  It  has  in  consequence  been 
found  necessary  to  combat  crime  by  far  more  stringent 
measures  than  would  be  required  in  England.  Sus- 
pensions of  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  insurrection  Acts 
of  great  severity,  frequent  change  of  venue,  and  care- 
ful selection  of  jurymen  have  all  been  necessary.  Not 
only  prosecuting  counsel,  but  even  judges,  have  con- 
stantly adopted  a  tone,  in  enforcing  the  guilt  of  crim- 
inals upon  juries,  which  would  hardly  have  been  toler- 
ated in  England;  and  in  the  absence  through  fear 
or  sympathy  of  more  respectable  witnesses,  paid  in- 
formers, often  of  the  most  disreputable  character,  and 
criminals  seeking  as  King's  evidence  to  escape  punish- 
ment, have  played  a  great  part.  Even  in  ordinary 
cases  the  Irish  witness,  with  his  cunning,  his  dexterity 
of  fence,  his  dislike  to  simple  and  straightforward  an- 
swers, his  picturesque,  diffuse,  evasive  phraseology, 
often  gives  an  Irish  trial  an  appearance  which  is  very 
strange  to  an  English  eye;  and  to  all  this  we  must  add 
the  intense  political  and  religious  passion  that  has  been 
constantly  imported  into  Irish  courts,  and  the  power 
which  appeals  to  such  passions  have  often  had  upon  wit- 
nesses and  juries. 

In  this  stormy  atmosphere  O'Connell  was  supreme. 
His  great  power  of  popular  eloquence ;  his  quickness  in 
seizing  opportunities  and  reading  character  and  judg- 
ing situations;  his  complete  and  intuitive  knowledge 
of  every  turn  and  cranny  of  an  Irish  nature  made  him 
almost  unrivalled.  He  could  touch  with  equal  skill 
the  chords  of  sympathy,  prejudice,  or  fear.  He  was 
supremely  great  as  a  cross-examiner — laying  subtle 
traps  for  untruthful  or  unskilful  or  timid  or  exagger- 
ating witnesses,  wheedling  and  flattering  till  he  had 
gained  their  confidence;  browbeating  with  tremendous 
violence;  detecting  with  an  eagle  eye  every  evasion  or 


O'CONNELL  AS  AN  ADVOCATE  9 

inconsistency.  He  was  absolutely  fearless,  and  no  ad- 
vocate ever  took  a  more  commanding  and  sometimes 
a  more  insolent  tone  in  dealing  with  a  hostile  judge, 
while  his  invective  knew  no  bounds,  and  there  was  no 
passion  and  no  prej  udice  to  which  he  would  not  appeal 
if  he  thought  it  in  the  interests  of  his  client.  He  came 
soon  to  be  looked  upon  by  the  criminal  classes  with  an 
almost  superstitious  reverence  as  the  one  man  who  could 
save  them  from  conviction. 

Many  anecdotes  are  told  of  his  skill  in  reading  char- 
acter. On  one  occasion  the  trial  of  a  man  whom 
O'Connell  well  knew  to  be  guilty  of  an  offence  which 
was  then  capital,  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  ser- 
jeant-at-law who  had  as  yet  but  little  experience  of 
such  cases.  He  was  an  excellent  lawyer  and  in  later 
years  a  great  judge,  but  a  man  of  very  sensitive  and 
scrupulous  character,  rendered  doubly  nervous  by  the 
fact  that  he  was  trying  a  case  on  which  a  human  life 
depended.  O'Connell  at  once  put  some  plainly  illegal 
questions,  and,  when  the  judge  very  properly  stopped 
him,  he  again  and  again  pursued  the  same  course. 
Then,  with  well-simulated  rage,  he  dashed  his  brief  to 
the  ground,  declared  that  the  blood  of  his  client  would 
be  on  the  head  of  the  judge  who  refused  to  permit  his 
defence,  and  stalked  majestically  out  of  the  court. 
The  result  was  what  he  anticipated.  The  judge  him- 
self acted  as  counsel  for  the  undefended  prisoner,  cross- 
examined  the  witnesses  against  him  with  great  severity, 
and  charged  in  such  a  manner  that  an  acquittal  was 
the  result. 

In  another  case,  when  it  was  a  question  whether  a 
will  had  been  signed  by  a  conscious  testator,  or  whether, 
as  was  suspected,  the  pen  had  been  put  into  a  dead 
man's  hand  to  trace  the  signature,  he  observed  that 
the  principal  witness,  under  severe  and  repeated  cross- 


10         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

examination,  always  returned  to  the  same  phrase,  *  there 
was  life  in  him. '  ^  By  virtue  of  your  oath,'  said  O'Con- 
nell,  '  did  you  not  put  a  fly  into  the  dead  man's  mouth, 
in  order  that  you  might  swear  that  there  was  life  in 
him? '  He  had  guessed  rightly,  and  the  witness,  pale 
with  terror,  confessed  his  crime. 

On  another  occasion  he  had.  to  defend  a  vituperative 
journalist,  who  had  often  bitterly  attacked  the  Corpo- 
ration of  Cork,  from  a  charge  of  assault,  resting  on  the 
fact  that  in  a  rush  from  a  theatre  he  had  broken  a  rib 
of  the  high  sheriff.  There  seemed  no  clear  evidence 
of  deliberation  or  intention;  but  O'Connell  knew,  or 
suspected,  that  the  jury  were  strongly  prejudiced 
against  his  client;.  He  asked,  in  a  careless  tone,  a  few 
questions,  bringing  out  the  fact  that  the  affair  might 
easily  have  been  an  accident;  but  when  it  came  to  his 
turn  to  speak  on  behalf  of  his  client,  he  said  he  did  not 
feel  inclined  to  make  a  speech,  but  would  content  him- 
self with  telling  a  story.  He  then  related  in  detail, 
and  with  much  humour,  a  murder  case  which  he  said 
he  had  once  witnessed  at  the  Clonmel  Assizes.  A  man 
was  charofed  with  the  murder  of  his  neiorhbour.  An 
ancient  feud  subsisted  between  them,  and  the  prisoner 
had  more  than  once  used  violence  against  the  man  he 
was  accused  of  murdering,  had  been  heard  vowing 
vengeance  against  him,  and  had  been  seen  following 
him  on  the  very  road  where  he  w^as  found  murdered. 
The  victim's  face  was  so  beaten  in  by  a  stone  that  he 
could  only  be  identified  by  his  dress.  The  chain  of 
circumstantial  evidence  seemed  complete  and  the  con- 
viction of  the  prisoner  inevitable,  when  he  called  a  sin- 
gle witness — the  very  man  who  was  alleged  to  have 
been  murdered.  It  turned  out  that  another  man  had 
that  night  been  murdered.  The  identification  by  dress 
failed  owing  to  the  similarity  of  the  dress  worn  by  the 


O'CONNELL  AS  AN  ADVOCATE  11 

Tipperary  peasantry.  The  presumed  victim  had  re- 
ceived a  hint  that  he  was  about  to  be  arrested  for  a 
Whiteboy  offence,  and  had  fled  from  justice;  but,  on 
hearing  that  his  ancient  enemy  was  being  tried  for  his 
life  on  account  of  him,  he  chivalrously  returned.  The 
judge  said  that  in  so  clear  a  case  it  was  needless  for 
him  to  charge,  when,  to  his  great  surprise,  the  jury 
asked  leave  to  retire,  and  to  his  still  greater  surprise 
they  returned  with  a  verdict  of  '  Guilty.'  '  Good 
God ! '  exclaimed  the  judge,  '  of  what  is  he  guilty — 
surely  not  of  murder? '  *  No,  my  lord,'  replied  the 
foreman,  *  but  he  stole  my  grey  mare  three  years  ago.' 
The  story  was  told  with  infinite  dramatic  skill,  and  the 
jury  were  convulsed  with  laughter,  when  O'Connell 
continued  in  another  tone :  '  So,  gentlemen  of  the 
jury,  if  Mr.  Boyle  did  not  wilfully  assault  the  sheriff, 
he  has  libelled  the  corporation.  Find  him  guilty  by 
all  means. '  It  is  not  surprising  that  a  verdict  of  ac- 
quittal speedily  followed. 

Other  stories  were  told  of  the  craft  with  which  he 
surprised  witnesses  who  were  substantially  truthful  into 
some  exaggerated  statement,  or  some  contradiction  in 
evidence,  which  procured  a  most  unexpected  acquittal. 
He  could  avail  himself  with  extraordinary  skill  of  legal 
subtleties,  and  sometimes  most  successfully  mystified 
ignorant  judges.  On  one  occasion,  as  he  himself  boasts, 
he  induced  a  judge  to  charge  for  the  acquittal  of  a 
client  who  had  stolen  goats,  on  the  strength  of  an  old 
statute  which  empowered  the  owners  of  cornfields,  gar- 
dens, or  plantations  to  destroy  all  goats  trespassing 
upon  them,  from  which  he  argued  that  goats  were  not 
property.  *  At  a  time  when  counsel  for  prisoners  were 
not  allowed  to  address  the  jury  it  was  noticed  that 


O'Neill  Daunt's  Personal  Recollections  of  O'Connell,  ii.  p.  43. 


12         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

O'Connell  had  a  rare  skill  in  raising  side  issues  or  put- 
ting illegal  questions,  and  in  defending  their  legality, 
throwing  in  short  interjectional  remarks  as  a  kind  of 

*  aside '  to  the  jury,  which  had  often  a  great  effect.  It 
was  noticed  also  that,  while  he  sometimes  assumed  a 
careless  manner  and  sometimes  the  manner  of  a  man 
who  was  acting  under  ungovernable  impulses,  he  never 
in  conducting  a  case  really  lost  his  presence  of  mind ; 
that  he  was  one  of  the  safest  and  most  cautious  of  advo- 
cates; that  he  was  one  of  the  best  men  of  business  who 
ever  appeared  at  the  Irish  Bar,  mastering  details  with 
a  rare  quickness  and  accuracy;  and  that  he  had  always 
the  great  merit  of  forgetting  himself  in  the  interest  of 
his  client,  and  never  allowing  any  personal  desire  for 
display  to  tempt  him  into  a  course  that  might  be  dan- 
gerous to  his  client.*  He  probably  saved  from  the  gal- 
lows some  who  might  otherwise  have  been  hanged  on 
inconclusive  or  prejudiced  evidence,  as  well  as  many  of 
whose  guilt  there  Avas  no  reasonable  doubt.  His  in- 
finite humour,  his  buoyant  spirits,  his  indefatigable 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  his  clients,  and  many  acts  of 
magnanimity  shown  to  young  and  inexperienced  coun- 
sel, seem  to  have  made  him  popular  at  the  Bar,  in  spite 
of  the  outrageous  violence  with  which  he  constantly 
attacked  those  who  were  at  any  time  his  opponents, 
and  of  the  domineering  insolence  he  so  often  disj)layed 
in  conducting  a  case.  Though  a  very  unscrupulous, 
he  was  essentially  a  very  kindly  man,  one  of  the  most 
delightful  of  companions,  and  there  was  a  contagious 
charm  in  his  high  animal  spirits,  in  the  ceaseless  flow 
of  his  anecdotes  and  jests.     ^  He  laughed,'  it  was  said, 

*  in  every  inch  of  his  body.' 

*  Some  excellent  remarks  on      and  her  Riders,  and  in  Phil- 
O'Connell's  legal  qualities  will      lips'  Recollections. 
be  found  in  Maddyn's  Ireland 


REIGN  OF  TORY  LAWYERS  13 

O'Connell  always  defended  the  excessive  violence  of 
his  language,  both  at  the  Bar  and  on  the  platform,  on 
the  ground  of  the  peculiar  position  of  the  Koman 
Catholics.  He  said  that  he  had  found  his  co-religion- 
ists as  broken  in  spirit  as  they  were  in  fortune;  that 
they  had  adopted  the  tone  of  the  weakest  mendicants; 
that  they  seemed  ever  fearful  of  wearying  the  dominant 
caste  by  their  importunity,  and  that  they  were  utterly 
unmindful  of  their  powers  and  of  their  rights.  His 
most  difficult  task  was  to  persuade  them  of  their 
strength,  and  to  teach  them  to  regard  themselves  as 
the  equals  of  their  fellow-countrymen.  The  easiest 
way  of  breaking  the  spell  was  to  adopt  a  defiant  and  an 
overbearing  tone.  The  spectacle  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
fearlessly  assailing  the  highest  in  the  land  with  the 
fiercest  invective  and  the  most  unceremonious  ridicule 
was  eminently  calculated  to  invigorate  a  cowering  peo- 
ple. A  tone  of  extreme  violence  was  the  best  corrective 
for  a  spirit  of  extreme  servility. 

This  apology  may  be  taken  for  what  it  is  worth.  It 
is,  however,  quite  true  that  to  a  Catholic  lawyer  of 
great  abilities  and  great  industry,  the  condition  of  the 
Irish  law  courts  must  at  this  time  have  been  intolerably 
galling.  To  his  Protestant  competitors  the  course  was 
fully  open.  O'Connell  could  not  even  assume  the  silk 
gown  of  a  King's  Counsel,  and  all  the  great  prizes  of 
his  profession  were  withheld  from  him.  Nor  was  this 
all.  Nearly  every  important  and  influential  post  was 
in  the  hands  of  men  who  were  bitterly  hostile  to  his 
co-religionists,  and  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  their 
appointments  were  largely  due  to  their  politics.  After 
the  long  series  of  corrupt  appointments  that  grew  out 
of  the  Union  struggle,  came  a  period  of  Tory  and  anti- 
Catholic  government  which  lasted,  with  very  short  in- 
tervals, for  a  quarter  of  a  century.     Lord  Manners — 


14        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

a  feeble  lawyer,  but  a  strong  anti- Catholic — held  the 
great  position  of  Chancellor  for  no  less  than  twenty 
years.  Lord  Norbury,  whose  buffooneries  on  the  Bench 
had  no  parallel  in  England  since  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, held  the  great  position  of  Chief  Justice  of  Com- 
mon Pleas  for  a  still  longer  period,  and  he  retained  it 
some  time  after  his  faculties  had  manifestly  declined. 
The  man,  however,  who  had  the  most  influence  not 
merely  over  legal  patronage,  but  also  in  the  practical 
administration  of  Ireland,  was  Saurin,  the  Attorney- 
General.  For  fifteen  years  he  had,  as  Lord  Wellesley 
said,  virtually  governed  Ireland.  He  was  a  descendant 
of  an  old  and  distinguished  Huguenot  family,  and  in- 
herited in  full  measure  the  anti-Catholic  sentiments  of 
his  ancestors.  He  was  an  excellent  lawyer,  a  man  of 
high  personal  character,  of  indomitable  strength  of  will 
and  of  talents  which,  though  not  brilliant,  were  emi- 
nently solid.  The  position  he  had  long  held  in  his 
profession  is  sufficiently  attested  by  the  fact  that  he 
had  been  selected  by  the  Dublin  lawyers  as  their  chair- 
man when  they  met  together  to  oppose  the  Union,  and 
his  speeches  against  that  measure  are  among  the  most 
weighty  that  were  delivered  in  the  Irish  Parliament. 
His  dread,  however,  of  a  possible  Catholic  ascendency 
led  him  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  unduly  strain  his 
powers,  and  O'Connell  recognised  in  him  the  bitterest 
and  most  dangerous  opponent  of  his  co-religionists. 

In  1813,  a  journalist  named  Magee,  who  had  writ- 
ten a  violent  attack  on  the  government  of  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  was  prosecuted  by  Sanrin  for  libel.  O'Con- 
nell was  counsel  to  Magee,  and,  seeing  at  once  that  it 
was  hopeless  to  expect  a  verdict  for  his  client,  he  deliv- 
ered a  long  speech  of  extraordinary  eloquence  and  pas- 
sion, but  also  of  the  most  unbridled  and  extravagant 
violence,  supporting  his  client's  denunciation  of  the 


MAGEE'S  TRIAL  15 

government  of  Ireland,  and  inveighing  in  terms  that 
had  hardly  ever  been  heard  in  a  law  court  against  the 
Attorney-General.  He  accused  him  of  having  packed 
the  jury  with  inveterate  enemies  of  the  Catholics,  and 
he  told  the  jury  so  to  their  faces.  He  described  Sau- 
rin's  speech  as  ^violent  and  virulent;  a  confused  and 
disjointed  tissue  of  bigotry  amalgamated  with  congenial 
vulgarity.'  He  accused  him  of  being  the  prime  mover 
and  instigator  of  all  the  rash  and  silly  and  irritating 
measures  that  had  in  the  last  years  afflicted  and  dis- 
tracted Ireland.  He  retorted  his  charges  against  the 
Catholic  Board  by  declaring  that  any  man  who  dared 
to  charge  the  Catholic  body  or  Catholic  Board,  or  any 
individuals  of  the  Board,  with  sedition  or  treason  was 
*  an  infamous  and  profligate  liar,'  and  he  gave  striking 
instances  of  calumnies  against  the  Catholics  which  had 
appeared,  unpunislied  and  uncondemned,  in  a  news- 
paper supported  by  the  Government.  The  judge  vainly 
tried  to  bring  back  the  discussion  to  orderly  limits. 
The  jury,  as  O'Connell  anticipated,  gave  a  verdict 
against  Magee;  but  before  he  was  brought  up  for  judg- 
ment he  published  this  speech  as  a  separate  pamphlet, 
and  adopted  and  emphasised  its  sentiments. 

Saurin  took  the  step — which  was  surely  under  the 
circumstances  at  least  injudicious — of  setting  forth  this 
publication  as  an  aggravation  of  the  original  offence, 
and  in  addressing  the  Court  on  the  subject  he  used  lan- 
guage which  appears  to  have  stung  O'Connell  almost 
to  madness.  In  his  reply  O'Connell  declared  that  it 
was  only  his  respect  for  the  law  court  that  enabled  him 
to  listen  patiently  to  an  attack  *  which,  had  it  been 
made  elsewhere,  would  have  met  merited  chastisement, 
and  he  proceeded,  under  the  thin  disguise  of  an  imag- 
inary character,  to  describe  his  opponent  as  *  a  creature 
narrow-minded,  mean,  calumnious,  of  inveterate  big- 


16         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

otry  and  dastard  disposition,  who  prosecutes  with  viru- 
lence and  malignity  and  delights  in  punishment  .... 
a  man  who  with  shameless  falsehood  brings  sweeping 
charges  against  the  population  of  the  land,  and  after- 
wards meanly  retracts  and  denies  them ;  without  a  par- 
ticle of  manliness  or  manhood  ....  speaking  with 
the  bigoted  virulence  and  dastard  malignity  of  an  an- 
cient and  irritated  female. '  There  was  much  more  in 
the  same  strain,  and  it  ended  in  the  condemnation  of 
Magee  to  two  years'  imprisonment. 

Some  years  later  an  incident  which  was  creditable 
to  no  party  revived  the  antagonism.  A  private  letter 
— written,  it  is  said,  nine  years  before — of  Saurin  to 
Lord  Norbury  was  picked  up  or  stolen,  which  con- 
tained matter  that  certainly  ought  not  to  have  been 
written  by  an  Attorney-General  to  a  Chief  Justice.  It 
contained  a  copy  of  a  letter  from  Lord  Rosse  to  Saurin, 
to  the  effect  that  when  Lord  Norbury  went  on  circuit, 
as  he  was  accustomed  to  talk  much  with  the  county 
members  and  other  leading  country  gentlemen,  it  would 
be  desirable  that  he  should  make  use  of  the  occasion  to 
impress  upon  them  the  advisability  of  using  their  influ- 
ence and  votes  in  opposition  to  the  Catholic  cause.  *  If 
you  will  judiciously  administer  a  little  of  this  medi- 
cine,' wrote  Saurin,  '  to  the  King's  County  or  any  other 
members  of  Parliament  that  may  fall  in  your  way,  you 
will  deserve  well.'  ^ 

This  confidential  and  stolen  letter  was  brought  to 
0' Council,  who  placed  it  in  the  hands  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Catholic  Association,  and  desired  a  meeting  to 
be  at  once  held  with  a  view  of  either  petitioning  Par- 
liament or  instituting  a  prosecution  against  Saurin  on 
the  charge  of  attempting  to  corrupt  a  judge  and  per- 

^  See  Fitzpatrick's  Correspondence  of  O'Connell,  i.  80-83  ;  One 
Year  of  the  Administration  of  Lord  Wellesley  (1823),  p.  59-60. 


O'CONNELL'S  PLACE  AT  THE  BAR  17 

vert  the  administration  of  justice.  He  wrote  formally 
to  Plunket,  who  was  then  Attorney- General,  bringing 
the  letter  before  him  and  calling  upon  him  to  institute 
such  a  prosecution.  Plunket,  however,  absolutely  re- 
fused to  take  any  steps  grounded  on  a  private  letter 
obtained  in  the  manner  that  has  been  describedo 
O'Connell  then  induced  Brougham  to  bring  the  letter 
before  the  House  of  Commons.  He  gained,  however, 
nothing  by  the  step.  Peel  answered  that  he  would 
rather  be  the  writer  than  the  man  who,  having  found 
the  letter,  made  so  base  a  use  of  it.  Brougham,  when 
the  circumstances  under  which  the  letter  was  obtained 
were  fully  known  to  him,  refused  to  take  any  further 
part  in  the  matter,  and  the  House  was  evidently  of  his 
opinion. 

Quarrels  at  the  Bar  and  questions  of  legal  patronage 
play  a  large  part  in  the  life  and  in  the  correspondence 
of  O'Connell,  but  it  is  here  sufficient  to  say  that  his 
own  position  as  a  practising  lawyer  was  of  the  highest. 
He  had  competitors  of  very  remarkable  ability.  Plunket 
was  one  of  the  greatest  orators  who  have  ever  lived,  and 
though  his  somewhat  hard  and  metallic  nature,  and  his 
distaste  for  political  life  deprived  him  of  the  influence 
and  popularity  which  his  transcendent  talent  might 
have  given  him,  his  ascendency  at  the  Bar  on  his  own 
subjects  was  almost  undisputed.  Bushe  could  address 
a  jury  with  a  persuasive  charm  that  no  rival  could  sur- 
pass, and  certainly  with  a  far  purer  taste  than  O'Con- 
nell ever  displayed.  There  were  other  lawyers  of  his 
later  day,  among  them  his  bitter  enemy  Blackburne, 
who  were  probably  the  equals  of  O'Connell  in  legal 
knowledge  and  who  encountered  him  with  indomitable 
courage  in  many  fields.  But  in  the  range  and  versa- 
tility of  his  gifts  O'Connell  had  no  superior,  and  as  the 
defender  in  criminal  cases  he  had  no  equal  at  the  Irish 

VOL.  II,  2 


18         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Bar.  As  early  as  1812  his  business  on  circuit  exceeded 
that  of  any  other  lawyer  and  was  almost  beyond  his 
power,  and  he  was  soon  able  to  boast  that  he  had  '  cer- 
tainly as  large,  probably  a  larger,  professional  income 
than  any  man  in  a  stuff  gown  ever  had  at  the  Irish 
Bar.'  When  he  finally  relinquished  practice  to  devote 
himself  to  political  agitation  his  professional  income 
had  reached  8,000/.  or  9,000/.  a  year — a  sum  which 
may  appear  moderate  to  a  modern  English  lawyer,  but 
w^hich  was  probably  surpassed  by  no  lawyer  at  that  time 
practising  at  the  Irish  Bar. 

The  Roman  Catholics  had  made  some  inconsider- 
able efforts  to  influence  public  opinion  by  a  society  for 
the  purpose  of  preparing  petitions  for  Parliament,  and 
of  this  society  he  soon  became  the  life.  His  extraordi- 
nary ability  and  extraordinary  industry  outweighed  all 
the  advantages  of  rank  and  old  services  that  were  some- 
times opposed  to  his  views.  There  is  much  reason  to 
believe  that  from  a  very  early  period  of  his  career  he 
conceived  the  scheme  of  policy  which  he  pursued 
through  life  with  little  deviation,  and,  it  must  be 
added,  with  little  scruple.  This  scheme  was  to  create 
and  lead  a  public  spirit  among  the  Roman  Catholics; 
to  wrest  emancipation  by  its  pressure  from  the  Govern- 
ment; to  perpetuate  the  agitation  thus  created  till  the 
Irish  Parliament  had  been  restored;  to  disendow  the 
Established  Church;  and  to  open  in  Ireland  a  new  era, 
with  a  separate  and  independent  Parliament  and  per- 
fect religious  equality. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  a  more  daring 
scheme  of  policy.  The  Roman  Catholics  had  hitherto 
shown  themselves  absolutely  incompetent  to  take  any 
decisive  part  in  politics.  They  were  not,  it  is  true, 
quite  as  prostrate  as  they  had  been  when  Swift  so  con- 
temptuously described  them  as  being  *  altogether  as  in- 


ATTITUDE  OF  CATHOLICS  IN  1808  19 

considerable  as  the  women  and  children  ....  without 
leaders,  without  discipline,  without  natural  courage, 
little  better  than  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water, 
and  out  of  all  capacity  of  doing  any  mischief  if  they 
were  ever  so  well  inclined;'  but  yet  the  iron  of  the 
penal  laws  had  entered  into  their  souls,  and  they  had 
always  thrown  themselves  helplessly  on  Protestant 
leaders.  Grattan,  it  is  true,  was  now  in  the  decline  of 
life;  but  Plunket,  who  was  still  in  the  zenith  of  his 
great  powers,  was  ready  to  succeed  him.  If  the  Eo- 
man  Catholics  could  be  braced  up  to  independent  ex- 
ertion the  noblemen  and  men  of  property  in  their  ranks 
would  be  their  natural  leaders,  and,  at  all  events,  a 
young  lawyer,  dej^endent  on  his  talents  and  excluded 
from  Parliament  and  from  the  higher  ranks  of  his  pro- 
fession, would  seem  very  unfitted  for  such  a  position. 
O'Connell,  however,  perceived  that  it  was  possible  to 
bring  the  whole  mass  of  the  people  into  the  struggle, 
and  to  give  them  an  almost  unexampled  momentum 
and  unanimity  by  applying  to  politics  a  great  power 
that  lay  dormant  in  Ireland — the  power  of  the  Cattiolic 
priesthood.  To  make  the  priests  the  rulers  of  the  coun- 
try, and  himself  the  ruler  of  the  priests,  was  his  first 
great  object. 

It  was  in  1808  that  he  first  rose  to  a  commanding 
position  in  the  Catholic  Committee.  A  profound  and 
very  natural  depression  had  at  this  time  fallen  upon  the 
Catholic  body.  The  deep  disappointment  which  had 
followed  the  abandonment  of  their  cause  after  the 
Union  had  been  for  a  short  time  and  in  some  degree 
dispelled  when  Fox  and  Grenville  rose  to  power,  and 
the  Catholics  had  consented  at  the  request  of  the  Eng- 
lish statesmen  to  abstain  from  petitioning  for  emanci- 
pation lest  they  should  embarrass  their  friends.  But 
the  defeat  of  Grenville  in  his  efforts  to  procure  the 


20        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

small  amount  of  justice  of  placing  Catholics  in  the 
army  in  England  on  a  level  with,  those  in  Ireland,  and 
to  abolish  at  the  same  time  the  few  restrictions  on  their 
promotion  that  remained;  the  violent  opposition  shown 
by  the  King  to  all  concessions,  and  the  general  election 
which  followed  in  which  the  No  Popery  cry  had  com- 
pletely triumphed  in  the  English  constituencies,  again 
dashed  their  hopes  to  the  ground.  Keogh,  who  had 
been  the  chief  leader  of  the  Catholic  party  in  the  strug- 
gle of  1792  and  1793,  and  who,  though  now  an  old  and 
infirm  man,  still  exercised  a  great  influence  upon  their 
counsels,  was  of  opinion  that  the  proper  course  for  the 
Catholics  to  pursue  was  to  maintain  a  '  dignified  silence,' 
and  abstain  for  the  present  from  petitioning  or  agitat- 
ing. With  this  party  O'Connell  successfully  grappled. 
His  advice  on  every  occasion  was  '  agitate,  agitate,  agi- 
tate,' and  he  carried  with  him  the  majority  of  the  Com- 
mittee. Keogh  a^ipears  from  this  time  to  have  alto- 
gether retired  from  active  participation  in  the  move- 
ment, and  O'Connell  became  its  dominating  infiuence. 
The  division  on  the  question  of  the  veto  immensely 
strengthened  his  position.  I  have  traced  in  the  life  of 
Grattan  the  leading  features  of  that  controversy,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  Catholic  emancipation 
had  been  carried,  as  it  ought  to  have  been,  in  the  quiet 
years  that  followed  the  Union,  it  would  have  been  ac- 
companied by  the  payment  of  the  priests  and  by  a 
serious  Government  control  over  the  appointment  of 
bishops.  The  bishops  had  formally  consented  to  these 
measures;  the  Court  of  Rome  was  fully  j)repared  to  ac- 
cede to  them,  and  the  Catholics  were  still  under  the 
guidance  of  men  of  the  most  moderate  type.  In  the 
sudden  revulsion  of  clerical  opinion  on  this  question 
O'Connell  bore  a  leading  part,  and  the  determination 
of  the  bishops  to  refuse  such  terms  at  once  divided  the 


MONSIGNOR  QUARANTOTTI  21 

Catholic  body,  brought  the  sacerdotal  element  into  a 
greatly  increased  prominence  in  Catholic  politics,  and 
placed  O'Connell  in  the  position  of  leader  of  the  popu- 
lar party.  The  struggle  lasted  for  many  years  and  with 
various  fortunes.  The  obstacles  to  be  encountered  by 
O'Connell  were  very  great.  It  was  impossible  to  con- 
ceal the  fact  that  the  Irish  bishops  in  1799  had  formally 
assented  to  such  an  arrangement,  and  it  was  supported 
by  the  English  Catholics  under  the  guidance  of  Mr. 
Butler;  by  the  large  majority  of  the  Catholic  aristoc- 
racy, gentry,  and  more  important  merchants  in  Ireland, 
as  well  as  by  all  the  leading  English  and  Irish  advo- 
cates of  Catholic  Emancipation  in  Parliament.  Shell, 
who  after  O'Connell  was  incomparably  the  most  bril- 
liant speaker  in  the  Catholic  Association,  was  on  the 
same  side. 

The  attitude  of  the  Court  of  Rome  was  still  more 
embarrassing.  The  Emancipation  Bill  of  1813,  which 
Bishop  Milner  had  denounced  as  schismatic  and  which 
gave  the  English  Government  the  right  of  veto  over 
the  appointment  of  Catholic  bishops,  and  proposed  to 
appoint  commissioners  to  examine  and  supervise  all 
documents  coming  from  Rome,  received  the  full  and 
formal  approbation  of  Monsignor  Quarantotti,  who 
managed  affairs  at  Rome  during  the  captivity  of  Pope 
Pius  VII.  He  was,  as  he  wrote,  'placed,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  Supreme  Pastor,  over  the  concerns  of  the 
Sacred  missions,  and  for  that  purpose  invested  with 
full  pontifical  powers,'  and  having  brought  the  matter 
before  a  special  congregation  of  the  most  learned  prel- 
ates and  divines  in  Rome,  he  Avrote  to  an  English  bishop 
that  the  Catholics  might  '  with  satisfaction  and  grati- 
tude accept  and  embrace  the  Bill.'  '  By  the  authority 
vested  in  us,'  he  added,  '  we  allow  that  those  who  are 
designed  for  a  bishopric  or  deanery  and  are  proposed  by 


22         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  clergy,  be  admitted  or  rejected  by  the  King  accord- 
ing to  the  proposed  Bill.'  Nor  did  he  object  to  the 
portion  of  the  Bill  relating  to  correspondence  with 
Rome.  *  Since  communication  with  the  head  of  the 
Church  in  spiritual  and  ecclesiastical  concerns  is  not 
prohibited,  but  the  inspection  of  the  Committee  re- 
gards only  matters  of  civil  policy,  this  likewise  ought 
to  be  acquiesced  in.' 

The  Irish  bishops,  largely  under  the  influence  of 
O'Connell,  refused  to  recognise  the  authority  of  Qua- 
rantotti,  or  even  the  authority  of  the  Pope  himself  in 
this  matter.  Deputation  after  deputation  was  sent  to 
Eome.  A  priest  named  Hayes,  who  was  deputed  by 
the  Irish  Catholics,  adopted  such  a  tone  that  the  Pope 
pronounced  him  to  be  '  intolerable,'  banished  him  from 
the  city,  and  took  some  credit  to  himself  for  not  having 
shut  him  up  in  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo.  The  Pope, 
however,  consented  to  have  the  question  examined 
afresh,  and  as  a  result  of  this  examination,  Cardinal 
Litta,  the  Prefect  of  the  Congregation  de  Propaganda 
Fide,  wrote  a  letter  in  April  1815,  by  the  command  of 
the  Pope,  defining  the  conditions  which  the  Catholics 
might  accept  as  the  price  of  their  emancipation.  It  in 
the  first  place  laid  down  three  different  forms  of  oath 
which  Catholics  might  take,  and  it  then  proceeded  to 
the  two  burning  questions  involved  in  the  Bill  of  1813. 
Catholic  bishops  in  Ireland  were  selected  by  the  Holy 
See  from  names  forwarded  to  it  by  the  clergy  of  the 
diocese,  and  the  Pope  ^  peremptorily  orders '  that  no 
priests  should  be  selected  as  candidates  for  the  Epis- 
copal office  who  did  not  in  addition  to  other  pastoral 
virtues  '  possess  in  an  eminent  degree  prudence,  love 
of  quiet,  and  loyalty.'  But  in  addition  to  this  guar- 
antee, *  His  Holiness  will  feel  no  hesitation  in  allowing 
those  to  whom  it  appertains  to  present  to  the  King's 


LETTER  OF  CARDINAL  LITTA  23 

Ministers  a  list  of  candidates,  in  order  that  if  any  of 
them  should  be  obnoxious  or  suspected,  the  Govern- 
ment may  immediately  point  him  out,  so  that  he  may 
be  expunged,  care,  however,  being  taken  to  leave  a 
sufficient  number  for  his  Holiness  to  choose  from.' 
He  at  the  same  time  promised  as  soon  as  emancipation 
was  carried  to  issue  a  brief  acknowledging  the  gener- 
osity of  the  British  Government,  and  exhorting  the 
Catholics  to  exert  their  utmost  endeavours  to  prove 
themselves  loyal  subjects. 

So  far  the  decision  is  substantially  the  same  as  that 
of  Monsignor  Quarantotti,  and  it  gave  no  satisfaction 
to  the  party  of  the  bishops  in  Ireland.  The  examina- 
tion of  the  rescripts  from  Rome,  however,  was  pro- 
nounced by  the  Pope  to  affect  the  free  exercise  of  the 
supremacy  of  the  Church,  and  although  he  acknowl- 
edged that  other  Governments  had  assumed  this  power, 
it  was  '  an  abuse  which  the  Holy  See,  to  prevent  greater 
evils,  is  forced  to  bear,  but  cannot  by  any  means  ap- 
prove.'  The  Cardinal  adds  that  express  instructions 
had  been  given  to  the  bishops,  prohibiting  them  from 
adverting  in  their  reports  to  the  Holy  See  to  any  politi- 
cal matters  whatever.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
Pope  hopes  that  the  English  Government  will  not  insist 
upon  this  portion  of  their  demand.^ 

The  Irish  bishops,  however,  were  perfectly  refrac- 
tory on  the  subject  of  the  veto,  and  they  ultimately 
carried  their  point.  They  passed  resolutions  condemn- 
ing all  interference  of  the  Crown  of  Great  Britain  in 
the  appointment  of  Catholic  bishops;  they  expressed 
their  determination  to  resist  such  interference  '  in  every 
canonical  and  constitutional  way; '  they  boldly  declared 
that  they  did  not  conceive  that  '  their  apprehensions 

'  See  these  two  documents  in  the  Appendix  to  Butler's  Memoirs 
of  Catholics. 


24         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

for  the  safety  of  the  Koman  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland 
can  or  ought  to  be  removed  by  any  determination  of  his 
Holiness,  adopted,  or  intended  to  be  adopted,  not  only 
without  our  concurrence,  but  in  direct  opposition  to 
our  repeated  resolutions,'  and  they  sent  a  new  deputa- 
tion to  Rome  to  inform  the  Pope  of  their  '  respectful, 
firm,  and  decided^  sentiments.  O'Connell  denounced 
the  letter  of  Cardinal  Litta  as  absolutely  unacceptable, 
and  inveighed  in  violent  language  against  Bishop  Mil- 
ner,  because  he  had  written  a  confidential  letter  which 
O'Connell  construed  into  a  recommendation  to  accept 
the  Papal  decision  in  the  terms  of  that  letter.  It  ap- 
pears, indeed,  that  Bishop  Milner  at  Rome  had  opposed 
the  veto  so  vehemently  that  he  had  been  threatened 
with  deposition  from  his  episcopal  office,  but  that  he 
afterwards  so  far  yielded  as  to  describe  the  veto  recom- 
mended in  Cardinal  Litta's  letter  as  ^  slight  in  itself 
and  safe  in  its  consequences.'*  The  Pope  himself 
wrote  a  long  letter  to  the  Irish  bishops,  in  which  he 
described  their  apprehensions  as  '  destitute  of  all  reason 
and  of  all  foundation,'  and  argued  with  much  force 
that  the  power  of  exclusion  he  had  granted  could  not 
possibly  be  dangerous  to  the  Church,  and  that  it  would 
be  extremely  impolitic  *  to  refuse  this  small  interfer- 
ence in  the  election  of  bishops '  to  the  British  Govern- 
ment." 

The  matter,  however,  was  not  pressed  further.  The 
bishops  made  no  recantation,  the  project  of  a  veto 
dropped  silently  out  of  politics,  and  when  Catholic 
Emancipation  was  carried  in  1829,  Sir  Robert  Peel 
abandoned  it  as  useless. 

The  division  created  in  the  Catholic  body  by  this 
controversy  was  very  serious,  and  it  placed  the  more 

*  Amherst,  History  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  ii.  180-187. 
'  Butler's  Memoirs  of  Catholics,  Appendix. 


EARLY  REPEAL  MOVEMENT  25 

democratic  section  in  strong  opposition  to  the  chief  par- 
liamentary advocates  of  the  Catholic  cause.  Grattan 
himself  on  one  occasion  spoke  of  O'Connell  in  the  bit- 
terest terms.  He  said  that  when  he  paraded  the  griev- 
ances of  Ireland,  *  he  omitted  the  greatest  grievance — 
himself;^  he  accused  him  offsetting  afloat  the  bad 
passions  of  the  people ; '  '  venting  against  Great  Britain 
the  most  disgusting  calumny; '  and  'making  politics  a 
trade  to  serve  his  desperate  and  interested  purposes; ' 
and  he  added,  with  much  truth,  that  '  it  is  the  part  of 
a  bad  man  to  make  use  of  grievances  as  instruments  of 
power  and  render  them  the  means  of  discontent,  with- 
out a  single  honest  attempt  at  redress/  ^ 

In  the  course  of  this  controversy  it  was  frequently 
urged  that  O'Connell's  policy  retarded  emancipation. 
This  objection  he  met  with  characteristic  frankness. 
He  avowed  himself  repeatedly  to  be  an  agitator  with 
an  'ulterior  object,'  and  declared  that  this  object  was 
the  repeal  of  the  Union.  '  Desiring,  as  I  do,  the  repeal 
of  the  Union,'  he  said  in  one  of  his  speeches,  in  1813, 
'  I  rejoice  to  see  how  our  enemies  promote  the  great 
object.  Yes,  they  promote  its  inevitable  success  by 
their  very  hostility  to  Ireland.  They  delay  the  liber- 
ties of  the  Catholics,  but  they  compensate  us  most  am- 
ply because  they  advance  the  restoration  of  Ireland. 
By  leaving  one  cause  of  agitation,  they  have  created, 
and  they  will  embody  and  give  shape  and  form  to  a 
public  mind  and  a  public  spirit.'  In  1811,  at  a  politi- 
cal dinner,  he  spoke  to  the  toast  of  Eepeal,  which  had 
been  given  at  his  suggestion,  and  he  repeatedly  re- 
verted to  the  subject.  Nothing  can  be  more  untrue 
than  to  represent  the  repeal  agitation  as  a  mere  after- 
thought designed  to  sustain  his  flagging  popularity. 


»  Pagan's  Life  of  O'Connell,  i.  524-526. 


26         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

From  first  to  last  hatred  of  the  Union  was  one  of  his 
strongest  feelings.  His  first  speech,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  delivered  against  it.  In  his  first  speech  on  purely 
Catholic  affairs,  which  was  made  in  1807,  he  again 
denounced  it. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  project  of  repeal  was 
first  started  by  him.  The  indignation  that  the  Union 
had  produced  in  Ireland  was  fermenting  among  large 
classes.  Lord  Hardwicke,  who  was  Viceroy  almost  im- 
mediately after  the  Union,  clearly  recognised  the  feel- 
ing and  expressed  grave  apprehensions  of  its  spreading. 
Many  traces  of  it  may  be  found  in  the  pamphlets  and 
correspondence  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century.  In 
1810  the  grand  jury  of  Dublin  passed  a  resolution  de- 
claring that '  the  Union  had  produced  an  accumulation 
of  distress;  and  that,  instead  of  cementing,  they  feared 
that  if  not  repealed  it  might  endanger  the  connection 
between  the  sister  countries. '  In  the  same  year  a  great 
meeting,  at  which  O'Connell  spoke,  was  held  in  Dub- 
lin, and  its  resolutions  in  favor  of  repeal  were  communi- 
cated to  Grattan,  who  was  member  i or  the  city.  Grat- 
tan  replied  that  a  demand  for  repeal  could  only  be 
successful  if  supported  and  called  for  by  the  nation; 
that  if  that  support  were  given,  he  would  be  ready  to 
advocate  it,  and  that  he  considered  such  a  course  per- 
fectly consonant  with  devoted  attachment  to  the  con- 
nection.*    Lord  Cloncurry  relates  that  he  was  a  mem- 

'  Grattan's  letter   is    so    re-  peal   of    an   Act    entitled   the 

markable  that  I  give  it  in  full.  "  Act    of    Union,"   and    your 

It  will  be  found  in  his  Life  by  committee  adds,  that  it  speaks 

his  son :  with  the  authority  of  my  con- 

*  Gentlemen.  —  I  had  the  stituents.  the  freemen  and  free- 
honour  to  receive  an  address,  holders  of  the  City  of  Dublin, 
presented  by  your  committee,  I  beg  to  assure  your  committee, 
and  expressive  of  their  wishes  and  through  them  my  much 
that  I  should  present  certain  beloved  and  much  respected 
petitions  and  support  the  re-  constituents,  that  I  shall  ac- 


THE  CATHOLIC  ASSOCIATION  27 

ber  of  a  deputation  which  on  another  occasion  waited 
on  Grattan,  and  that  Grattan  said  to  them,  *  Gentle- 
men, the  best  advice  I  can  give  my  fellow  citizens  upon 
every  occasion  is  to  keep  knocking  at  the  Union/  * 

O'Connell,  however,  though  he  never  concealed  his 
opinions  on  this  question,  had  a  strong  sense  of  times 
and  seasons,  and  in  the  earlier  part  of  his  career  he 
made  the  emancipation  of  the  Catholics  the  almost  ex- 
clusive object  of  his  policy.  The  machinery  by  which 
ho  worked  consisted  of  associations  binding  together 
the  great  masses  of  the  Catholic  population  and  the  not 
inconsiderable  body  of  Protestants  who  supported  their 
claims,  and  at  the  same  time  sustaining  popular  inter- 
est by  a  constant  succession  of  aggregate  meetings  and 
fiery  speeches.  The  nucleus  of  the  agitation  may  be 
found  in  the  Catholic  Association,  which  was  founded 
in  1806.  Its  great  difficulty  was  the  Convention  Act 
of  1793,  which  prohibited  any  assembly  in  Ireland  other 
than  Parliament  from  assuming  a  representative  char- 
acter and  authority,  and  consisting  of  delegates  from 
other  bodies,  and  made  the  election  of  such  delegates 
unlawful.  On  the  other  hand,  the  right  of  petitioning 
was  always  recognised  as  a  fundamental  right;  and  by 
availing  himself  of  this  right  O'Connell  contrived  with 

cede  to  their  proposition.  I  that  sort  in  Parliament,  to  be 
shall  present  their  petitions  either  prudent  or  possible,  must 
and  support  the  repeal  of  the  wait  until  it  should  be  called 
Act  of  Union  with  a  decided  for  and  backed  by  the  nation, 
attachment  to  our  connection  When  proposed,  I  shall  then, 
with  Great  Britain,  and  to  that  as  at  all  other  times  I  hope  I 
harmony  between  the  two  coun-  shall,  prove  myself  an  Irish- 
tries,  without  which  the  con-  man,  and  that  Irishman  whose 
nection  cannot  last.  I  do  not  first  and  last  passion  was  his 
impair  either,  as  I  apprehend,  native  country.'  —  Grattan's 
when  I  assure  you  that  I  shall  Life,  v.  419-420. 
support  the  repeal  of  the  Act  '  Cloncurry's  Personal  Recol- 
of  Union.  You  will  please  to  lections,  p.  173. 
observe  that  a  proposition  of 


28         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

much  dexterity  to  violate  continually  the  spirit  of  the 
Convention  Act,  while  keeping  within  the  letter  of  the 
law.  In  1807  every  parish  in  Dublin  sent  delegates  to 
the  Catholic  Association  for  the  purpose  of  preparing 
petitions,  and  a  certain  number  of  gentlemen  attended 
in  their  individual  capacities,  dt  the  request  of  an  aggre- 
gate meeting,  to  assist  them. 

In  the  following  years  the  organisation  was  some- 
what enlarged.  All  the  members  of  the  Catholic  peer- 
age, the  survivors  of  the  delegates  who  had  been  chosen 
for  the  Catholic  Association  of  1793,  and  the  persons 
who  had  been  chosen  to  prepare  the  Catholic  petitions 
in  1805  and  1807,  were  to  form  part  of  the  committee; 
but  they  disclaimed  the  character  of  representatives  of 
the  Catholic  body,  or  of  any  portion  thereof,  and  de- 
clared themselves  to  be  only  charged  with  the  duty  of 
preparing  a  petition  to  Parliament.^  The  establish- 
ment of  local  committees  connected  with  the  central 
body  in  Dublin  was  proposed,  but  rejected  as  too  likely 
to  infringe  the  law;  but  by  distinct  public  meetings 
held  in  the  different  Catholic  counties  the  connection 
was  substantially  maintained.  The  central  body,  how- 
ever, gradually  became  bolder  in  its  defiance  of  the  Con- 
vention Act.  It  had  at  first  confined  itself  to  petition- 
ing, but  towards  the  end  of  1810  it  became  a  committee 
of  grievances,  and  speeches  were  made  at  it  and  various 
Catholic  grievances  were  agitated.  A  committee  was 
then  appointed — to  be  composed  of  the  thirty-six  mem- 
bers from  Dublin  and  ten  gentlemen  from  each  county 
in  Ireland — for  the  purpose  of  presenting  an  address  to 
the  King,  a  remonstrance  to  the  British  nation,  and  a 
petition  to  Parliament.  It  was  to  be  called  *  a  general 
committee  of  the  Catholics  of  Ireland,'  and  it  was  im- 

^  Wyse,  History  of  the  Catholic  Association,  i.  142-143 ;  ii. 
Append,  pp.  xxvii-xxix. 


ARREST  OF  DELEGATES  29 

agined  that  by  thus  specifying  and  limiting  its  objects 
the  Catholic  Committee  would  escape  the  interference 
of  the  Government;  but  in  February  1811,  Wellesley 
Pole,  who  was  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland  under  the 
Eichmond  Administration,  issued  a  circular  letter  de- 
claring it,  as  now  constituted,  to  be  a  violation  of  the 
Convention  Act,  and  directing  the  magistrates  to  arrest 
all  persons  concerned  in  the  election  of  delegates  to  it. 
Lord  Fingall  and  several  other  members  were  arrested 
by  virtue  of  a  warrant  from  Chief  Justice  Downes,  and 
admitted  to  bail.  A  trial  followed,  and  two  delegates 
accused  of  violating  the  law  were  acquitted  by  a  Dublin 
jury  on  the  ground  that  they  had  only  been  engaged  in 
the  lawful  purpose  of  petitioning;  but  when  the  Com- 
mittee attempted  to  establish  their  legality  by  the  ex- 
traordinary measure  of  prosecuting  Chief  Justice 
Downes  they  were  defeated.  Delegation,  even  for  the 
purpose  of  petitioning,  was  pronounced  illegal,  and  the 
association  was  dissolved. 

It  was,  however,  at  once  replaced  by  *  The  Catholic 
Board,'  which,  while  absolutely  disclaiming  any  repre- 
sentative character,  was  practically  the  same  body  con- 
sisting of  a  voluntary  association  of  the  former  mem- 
bers. It  never  attained  the  activity  or  importance  of 
its  predecessor.  The  dissensions  about  the  veto  were 
now  at  their  height.  The  great  majority  of  the  Catho- 
lic gentry  were  separated  from  the  party  of  O'Connell 
and  the  priests,  and  the  secession  of  the  men  of  prop- 
erty and  position  soon  weakened  and  discredited  the 
Board.  Local  Catholic  boards,  however,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  keeping  alive  the  question,  were  formed  in 
many  places.  Aggregate  meetings,  in  which  O'Con- 
nell was  the  most  conspicuous  figure,  were  frequently 
held,  and  provincial  subscriptions  were  started  in  1813 
for  the  purpose  of  supporting  the  central  body. 


30         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

In  the  House  of  Commons  the  Catholic  question, 
under  the  guidance  of  Grattan  and  Phmket,  seemed  at 
this  time  very  flourishing,  and  the  letters  of  Peel  and 
Saurin  show  the  extreme  despondency  which  had  fallen 
upon  the  ultra- Protestant  party/  In  1812  the  House 
of  Commons  had  pledged  itself  by  235  votes  to  126  to 
take  up  the  Catholic  question  in  the  following  year, 
and  in  1813  Grattan's  Bill,  with  the  added  clause  of 
Canning,  giving  the  securities  which  I  have  already 
enumerated,  seemed  very  likely  to  triumph.  In  three 
months  no  less  than  four  divisions  were  carried  in 
favour  of  the  Catholics,  and  Grattan  fully  accepted  the 
securities  as  reasonable  and  equitable.  Wilberforce, 
who  more  than  any  other  man  in  Parliament  repre- 
sented the  religious  Evangelical  feeling  of  England, 
voted  on  this  occasion  with  Grattan.  Wellesley  Pole, 
who  had  recently  relinquished  to  Peel  the  office  of 
Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland,  and  who  had  hitherto  been 
regarded  as  a  strong  opponent  of  the  Catholic  claims, 
now,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  his  colleagues,  made 
a  speech  urging  the  necessity  of  concession.  The  Gov- 
ernment of  Lord  Liverpool  was  divided  on  the  subject, 
but  the  progress  of  the  Catholics  under  the  guidance 
of  Grattan  was  so  manifest  that  Peel,  who  was  still  bit- 
terly opposed  to  concession,  acknowledged  his  despond- 
ency about  ultimate  success,  while  Saurin  wrote  that 
the  Protestant  cause  seemed  lost  in  the  Commons,  and 
that  it  was  only  on  the  question  of  securities  that  it 
was  possible  to  make  a  rally.'  But  O'Connell  and  the 
bishops,  to  the  great  delight  of  Peel,  threw  over  Grat- 
tan and  repudiated  the  securities,  and  the  cause  of  the 
Catholics  speedily  receded.  The  violent  language  used 
at  the   aggregate   meetings   disgusted   some   of   their 


See  Peel's  Correspondence,  vol.  i.    '  Ihid,  i.  80-83. 


'SUPPRESSION  OF  THE  CATHOLIC  BOARD  31 

warmest  friends.  Even  Buslie,  who  was  now  Solicitor- 
General.,  and  who  had  been  one  of  their  oldest  support- 
ers, was  now  shaken.  He  said  that  the  priests  ought 
to  be  paid  and  that  some  other  indulgences  ought  to  be 
granted,  but  that  their  tone  in  Ireland  was  so  violent 
that  he  was  not  ready  to  support  immediate  emancipa- 
tion. An  absurd  proposal,  made  at  one  of  the  meet- 
ings, to  ask  Spain  and  Portugal  to  intercede  in  favour 
of  Irish  Catholics,  was  made  much  use  of.  I  do  not 
know  that  O'Connell  had  anything  to  say  to  it,  but  the 
Board  was  manifestly  declining  both  in  influence  and 
character,  and  in  1813  Peel  believed  that  it  did  not 
contain  more  than  about  twenty  active  members,  and 
that  its  principal  influence  lay  in  a  violent  and  sedi- 
tious press. 

At  last,  in  June  1814,  a  proclamation  was  issued 
suppressing  it  as  an  illegal  body,  and  it  is  remarkable 
that  Grattan  and  nearly  all  the  other  Irish  members  of 
Parliament  approved  of  the  suppression.'  O'Connell 
denounced  it  at  an  aggregate  meeting  as  illegal  and  des- 
potic, but  he  seems  to  have  found  no  great  support. 
He  still  maintained  the  organisation  in  an  attenuated 
form  by  inviting  its  members  in  their  individual  ca- 
pacity to  meet  him  as  guests  in  Capel  Street.  His  agita- 
tion, however,  appears  at  this  time  to  have  been  almost 
dead.  The  aggregate  meetings  became  fewer  and 
fewer,  and  at  last  nearly  ceased.  In  1818,  when  the 
movement  for  parliamentary  reform  in  England  was 
beginning  to  rise,  O'Connell  occupied  himself  chiefly 
in  arousing  a  corresponding  spirit  in  Ireland,  and  he 
desired  that  Catholic  petitions  for  emancipation  should 
be  for  the  present  discontinued. 

The  nine  years  following   the   dissolution   of  the 


'  Peel's  Correspondence,  138-141. 


32        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Catholic  Committee  in  1811  were  the  least  brilliant  and 
the  least  eventful  in  his  career.  His  professional  repu- 
tation, it  is  true,  was  steadily  rising;  he  had  become 
the  undisputed  leader  and  the  chief  inspirer  of  the 
clerical  and  democratic  party  who  repudiated  all  con- 
cession of  a  power  of  veto  or  control  over  the  Irish 
clergy  to  the  English  Government,  and  in  1815  the 
Catholics  voted  him  a  piece  of  plate  of  the  value  of 
1,000  guineas  as  a  testimonial  for  his  services  to  the 
cause.  But  on  the  whole  that  cause  had  gone  back- 
ward, and  the  fear  that  if  the  Catholics  were  emanci- 
pated their  guidance  would  fall  into  bad  hands  had 
increased. 

Two  or  three  incidents  relating  to  this  period  must 
be  briefly  told.  In  1815  O'Connell  fought  his  famous 
duel  with  D'Esterre,  a  member  of  the  Dublin  Corpora- 
tion. It  arose  out  of  a  speech  in  which  O'Connell  had 
denounced  that  body,  which  at  this  time  was  violently 
anti-Catholic,  as  *  a  beggarly  corporation.'  The  provo- 
cation, considering  the  usual  tone  of  his  oratory,  was 
not  very  excessive,  but  D'Esterre  deliberately  took  up 
the  case,  and  on  the  refusal  of  O'Connell  to  recant 
forced  on  a  duel.  O'Connell,  according  to  the  received 
code,  could  hardly  have  avoided  it.  He  was  an  ex- 
cellent pistol  shot,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt 
his  assertion  that  he  fired  low  with  the  express  ob- 
ject of  avoiding  a  mortal  part,  but  his  bullet  enter- 
ing the  hip  of  D'Esterre,  pierced  the  bladder,  and  two 
days  after  he  died.  His  family  and  friends  refused  to 
prosecute,  but  the  incident  left  a  deep  and  lasting  im- 
pression upon  O'Connell.  D'Esterre  died  in  embar- 
rassed circumstances,  and  O'Connell  vainly  tried  to 
induce  the  widow  to  accept  from  him  an  annuity.  He 
did  prevail  on  her  daughter  to  accept  such  an  annuity, 
which  was  regularly  paid  till  his  death;  and  several 


QUARREL  WITH  PEEL  33 

years  after  the  duel,  when  Mrs.  D'Esterre  was  involved 
in  an  important  law-suit,  O'Connell  threw  up  some 
lucrative  briefs  in  Dublin  and  posted  down  to  Cork  in 
order  to  plead  her  cause,  which  he  did  with  perfect 
success.  It  was  noticed  by  his  friends  that,  long  after 
the  duel,  whenever  he  passed  the  house  in  which 
D'Esterre  had  lived  he  lifted  his  hat  and  his  lips  were 
seen  to  move  in  prayer. 

In  the  same  year  he  was  involved  in  another  duel 
with  a  much  more  important  person.  Peel  was  at  this 
time  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland,  and  the  deep  and  life- 
long antipathy  between  these  two  men  had  already  be- 
gun. O'Connell  early  recognised  in  Peel  the  ablest 
and  most  dangerous  opponent  of  the  Catholic  cause. 
With  little  or  nothing  of  the  pure  fanaticism  of  Eldon 
or  Duigenan  or  Saurin,  it  was  his  task  during  many 
years  of  his  life  to  defend  their  policy  on  plausible 
grounds  of  expediency,  and  his  influence  contributed 
more  than  any  other  to  counterbalance  the  Liberal  in- 
stincts of  Canning  in  the  Liverpool  Cabinet,  and  to 
throw  back  the  question  till  the  period  had  passed  when 
it  could  be  w^isely  and  moderately  carried.  All  the 
great  services  which  Peel  rendered  in  other  fields  can 
hardly  counterbalance  the  evil  which  in  this  respect 
followed  from  his  policy,  and  it  was  to  that  policy  that 
he  chiefly  owed  his  seat  at  Oxford  and  much  of  the 
success  of  his  early  career.  When  he  first  came  into 
'collision  with  O'Connell  it  was  still  in  its  initial  stage, 
and  the  temperaments  of  the  two  men  were  as  different 
as  their  politics.  The  Irishman  was  utterly  reckless  in 
the  language  he  used  about  his  opponents,  a  man  of 
violent  impulses  and  swiftly  changing  moods.  The 
Englishman  was  cautious,  deliberate,  conscientious, 
carefully  weighing  his  words,  yet  concealing  under  a 
cold  manner  an  extremely  sensitive  nature,  keenly  sen- 

VOL.  II.  3 


34         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

sible  to  any  imputation  upon  his  honour.  O'Connell 
nicknamed  Peel  '  Orange  Peel/  and  he  once  said  of 
him  that '  his  smile  was  like  the  silver  plate  on  a  coffin/ 
The  provocation  given  in  1815  was  at  an  aggregate 
meeting  in  Dublin,  in  which  O'Connell  accused  Peel 
of  having  grossly  traduced  him  in  Parliament,  where 
he  could  not  be  called  to  account  for  his  words,  and 
defied  him  '  in  any  place  where  he  was  liable  to  per- 
sonal account  to  use  a  single  expression  derogatory  to 
his  integrity  or  honour.'  After  some  angry  correspond- 
ence Peel  sent  a  challenge,  which  was  accepted.  It 
was  agreed  that  the  duel  should  take  place  in  the 
county  of  Kildare,  but  O'Connell  and  his  seconder, 
Mr.  Lidwell,  were  at  once  arrested  and  bound  over  to 
keep  the  peace  in  the  kingdom.  The  arrest  of  O'Con- 
nell was  due  to  information  given  by  his  wife,  who  sus- 
pected the  intentions  of  her  husband,  and  the  arrest  of 
Lidwell  is  said  to  have  been  due  to  information  given 
by  his  daughter.  O'Connell  offered  to  transfer  the  duel 
to  the  Continent.  Ostend  was  selected  as  the  place  of 
meeting,  and  Peel  at  once  left  Ireland  to  go  there. 
After  some  days'  delay  O'Connell  followed,  but  his 
arrest  in  London  terminated  the  affair. 

Much  angry  recrimination  followed.  The  friends 
of  O'Connell  accused  the  authorities  of  partisanship  in 
having  arrested  him  and  not  his  opponent,  while  the 
manner  in  which  the  dispute  at  every  stage  was  adver- 
tised in  letters  in  the  Irish  newspapers,  as  well  as  the 
circumstances  of  the  arrest,  made  many  believe  that 
O'Connell,  at  least,  had  no  real  desire  to  fight.  An 
epigram  attributed  to  Bushe  was  widely  quoted :  ^ 

Our  patriots,  adverse  to  slaughter, 
Improve  on  the  Scripture  command ; 

*  There  is  a  slightly  different  version  of  this  epigram  and  of 
the  circumstances  that  produced  it  in  Moore's  Diary,  iv.  116. 


O'CONNELL'S  SCURRILITY  35 

They  houour  their  wife  and  their  daughter 
That  their  days  may  be  long  in  the  land. 

Grattan,  who  had  always  been  very  ready  with  his 
pistol,  publicly  spoke  of  O'Conneirs  courage  *as  of  a 
hesitating  quality/  and  shortly  after  the  intended  duel 
a  characteristic  scene  is  said  to  have  taken  place  in  the 
Irish  Law  Court.  '  I  think  your  lordship  does  not  ap- 
prehend my  meaning,'  O'Connell  is  reported  to  have 
said,  when  arguing  a  law  case  before  Lord  Norbury. 
'Oh,  Mr.  O'Connell,'  interrupted  the  old  Chief  Jus- 
tice, who  had  himself  been  an  inveterate  duellist,  *  I 
know  no  one  more  easily  apprehended  than  you  are — 
when  you  wish  it.' 

O'Connell,  however,  from  this  time  resolutely  re- 
fused to  be  drawn  into  any  duel.  He  publicly  an- 
nounced that  he  had  registered  before  Heaven  a  vow 
on  the  subject.  Few  persons  will  now  blame  him  for 
it.  Quite  apart  from  the  religious  motive  which  after 
the  death  of  D'Esterre  appears  to  have  had  a  deep  and 
genuine  influence  on  his  mind,  it  was  in  a  high  degree 
useful  that  a  prominent  public  man  should  refuse  to 
permit  every  ignorant  firebrand  to  force  him  by  insults 
into  the  field.  But  O'Connell  ought  at  least  to  have 
registered  another  vow — himself  to  abstain  from  the 
language  of  scurrilous  insult.  This  he  never  did,  and 
there  is  scarcely  a  public  man  from  whom  he  differed 
who  was  not  the  object  of  his  outrageous  abuse.  It 
had  become  an  inveterate  habit  of  his  mind.  In  his 
most  private  correspondence  miscreant,  ruffian,  vaga- 
bond and  such  like  terms  are  always  recurring,  and  in 
his  speeches,  and  even  in  his  deliberate  writings,  sim- 
ilar language  was  constantly  employed.  Stanley  was 
*  Scorpion  Stanley,'  Lord  Alvanley  was  *a  bloated  buf- 
foon,' the  Duke  of  Wellington  was  a  *  stunted  cor- 
poral,' Lord  Brougham  was  'an  indescribable  wretch.' 


36         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Others  were  described  as  'a  mighty  big  liar/  *a  lineal 
descendant  of  the  impenitent  thief/  ^a  contumelious 
cur/  '  a  sow/  *  a  fellow  whose  visage  would  frighten  a 
horse  from  its  oats.'  The  ceaseless  torrent  of  abuse 
which  at  every  period  of  his  life,  and  in  every  sphere 
in  which  he  moved,  he  poured  upon  all  opponents;  the 
rapidity  with  which  he  passed,  on  very  small  provoca- 
tion, from  a  tone  of  the  most  hyperbolical  praise  to  the 
language  of  Billingsgate;  and  the  virulence  with  which 
he  attacked  some  of  the  most  illustrious  characters  in 
the  country,  prejudiced  all  moderate  men  against  him. 
It  was  said  that  his  mind  consisted  of  two  compart- 
ments— the  one  inhabited  by  the  purest  angels,  and  the 
other  by  the  vilest  demons — and  that  the  occupation  of 
his  life  was  to  transfer  his  friends  from  the  one  to  the 
other.  Such  language  could  hardly  fail  to  lower  the 
character  of  the  movement,  and  it  especially  weakened 
his  position  when  he  became  a  member  of  Parliament. 
That  tone  of  gentlemanly  moderation,  that  well-bred, 
pungent  raillery  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament,  and  of  successful  English  ministers, 
has  often  proved  a  more  efficient  weapon  of  debate  than 
the  most  splendid  eloquence  or  the  most  trenchant  wit. 
It  draws  a  magic  circle  round  the  speaker,  which  only 
similar  weapons  can  penetrate,  and  it  seldom  fails  to 
secure  the  attention  and  the  respect  of  the  public. 

Some  palliation,  or  at  least  some  explanation,  of  the 
language  of  O'Connell  may,  no  doubt,  be  found  in  the 
violence  with  which  he  was  assailed  in  the  English 
press,  as  well  as  by  a  considerable  section  of  his  own 
countrymen.  The  'Times,'  especially  under  the  edi- 
torship of  Colonel  Sterling,  was  throughout  his  life  his 
bitterest  enemy,  and  the  language  it  employed  was 
sometimes  far  in  excess  of  anything  that  could  now 
be  found  in  respectable  journalism.     O'Connell  nick- 


AN  ADVOCATE  OF  VIOLENCE  37 

named  this  paper  *the  Lady  of  the  Strand/  and  com- 
pared it  to  a  misplaced  milestone  which  could  never  by 
any  possibility  tell  the  truth.  There  is  one  curious 
letter  extant  in  which  O'Connell  expressed  a  wish  that 
his  son  should  avoid  personalities  in  his  speeches,  add- 
ing that  this  was  the  more  necessary,  as  it  was  a  '  he- 
reditary defect.'  But  in  truth  he  never  seems  to  have 
placed  any  real  restraint  upon  his  tongue.  He  almost 
boasted  of  his  license,  saying  that  ^  when  a  man  hap- 
pened to  be  a  scoundrel  he  had  a  pretty  good  tongue 
for  describing  him/  and  he  again  and  again  said  that 
violence  was  the  best  means  of  gaining  a  point  in  poli- 
tics. 'People  used  to  say  to  me/  he  once  said, 
*  **  O'Connell,  you  will  never  get  anything  as  long  as 
you  are  so  violent.''  What  did  I  do?  I  became  more 
violent  and  I  succeeded.'  ^  He  contrasted  the  indiffer- 
ence shown  to  petitions  from  English  Catholics  who 
were  the  most  loyal  and  respectful  of  men  with  the 
concessions  obtained  through  the  angry  pressure  of  the 
Catholics  in  Ireland;  when  remonstrated  with  about 
the  violence  of  his  attacks  he  contented  himself  with 
answering  that  no  one  was  more  ready  to  recant  if  he 
had  misstated  any  fact,  and  he  sometimes  expressed 
what  appears  to  have  been  a  perfectly  sincere  surprise 
that  men  whom  he  had  at  one  time  loaded  with  abuse 
were  afterwards  unwilling  to  co-operate  cordially  with 
him.  He,  indeed,  rarely  showed  sustained  rancour, 
and  a  great  part  of  his  career  was  spent  in  conciliating 
opponents  and  trying  to  smooth  down  animosities.  He 
was  fond  of  quoting  the  French  proverb,  *  You  will 
catch  more  flies  with  a  spoonful  of  honey  than  with  a 
hogshead  of  vinegar.' 

On  the  whole,  however,  he  did  both  himself  and  his 


O'Neill  Daunt's  Personal  Recollections,  i.  285. 


38  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

cause  a  lasting  injury  by  the  habitual  extravagance  of 
his  language.  He  won  by  his  splendid  gifts  the  ad- 
miration of  multitudes  who  were  far  from  sharing  his 
views,  and  the  passionate  devotion  of  millions  of  his 
countrymen,  but  neither  the  admiration  nor  the  love 
was  largely  mixed  with  respect. 

Besides  the  duel  and  proposed  duel  I  have  related, 
perhaps  the  most  striking  incident  of  this  period  of 
O'ConnelFs  life  was  the  reception  of  George  IV.  in 
Ireland.  During  the  period  that  immediately  preceded 
and  that  which  immediately  followed  the  Union  the 
conscientious  objection  of  George  III.  had  formed  the 
most  insuperable  obstacle  to  the  attainment  of  Catholic 
emancipation.  The  deep  respect  which  his  high  per- 
sonal character  and  long  reign  naturally  inspired,  and 
perhaps  still  more  the  unhappy  fact  that  one  of  his 
attacks  of  insanity  had  been  associated  with  the  agita- 
tion of  the  Catholic  question,  gave  the  opposition  of 
the  King  an  overwhelming  weight;  but  the  Catholics 
naturally  looked  forward  to  a  new  reign  to  relieve  them 
of  that  obstacle.  The  Prince  of  Wales  had  been  a  close 
associate  of  Fox  and  his  party,  and  at  the  time  when 
the  question  was  first  raised  in  the  Imperial  Parliament 
he  had  given  the  Whigs  the  most  distinct  and  authen- 
tic pledge  of  his  desire  to  see  the  Catholics  relieved 
from  their  disabilities,  and  of  his  intention  to  exert 
himself  for  their  relief  as  soon  as  he  should  have  it  in 
his  power  to  do  so  constitutionally.  The  explicit  state- 
ments of  Ponsonby  and  of  Earl  Grey  in  1812  leave  no 
doubt  on  the  subject.^  In  that  year  the  insanity  of 
George  III.  was  recognised  as  complete  and  incurable, 
and  the  establishment  of  a  permanent  regency  in  the 
hands  of  his  son  removed  what  Pitt  had  regarded  as 


*  See  Taylor's  Life  of  Peel,  i.  52-53. 


PRINCE  REGENT  AND  THE  CATHOLICS  39 

the  one  real  obstacle  to  the  Catholic  concession.  No 
one  can  wonder  at  the  resentment  and  disappointment 
of  the  Catholics  when  they  found  that  the  Kegent  now 
ranged  himself  against  their  claims,  and  that  the  sover- 
eign power  of  the  realm  was  once  more  exerted  to  pre- 
vent their  emancipation.  It  is  now  known  that  the 
dissolution  of  the  Catholic  Board  in  1812  was  largely 
due  to  instructions  written  by  the  Prince  Eegent  to 
the  Duke  of  Richmond,  who  was  then  Viceroy;^  and 
the  attitude  of  the  special  friends  of  the  Prince  in  Par- 
liament left  no  doubt  about  his  disposition.  The 
change,  rightly  or  wrongly,  was  generally  attributed  to 
the  influence  of  a  mistress,  and  the  exasperated  Catho- 
lics in  Ireland,  while  renewing  their  petition  for  relief, 
drew  upon  their  famous  '  Witchery  Resolutions '  in 
terms  of  the  bitterest  sarcasm.  '  From  authentic  docu- 
ments before  us,'  they  said,  '  we  learn  with  deep  disap- 
pointment and  anguish  how  cruelly  the  promised  boon 
of  Catholic  freedom  has  been  interrupted  by  the  fatal 
witchery  of  an  unworthy  secret  influence,  hostile  to  our 
fairest  hopes,  spurning  alike  the  sanction  of  public  and 
private  virtue.'  O'Connell  supported  these  resolutions 
in  a  speech  which  the  Prince  is  said  never  to  have  for- 
gotten or  forgiven. 

He,  however,  in  every  period  of  his  career  professed 
a  deep  attachment  to  the  connection  of  Ireland  and 
England  through  the  medium  of  the  Crown;  and 
George  IV.  when  he  came  to  Ireland  in  1821,  immedi- 
ately after  his  coronation,  was  received  with  a  wild  en- 
thusiasm which  seemed  to  justify  the  somewhat  strange 
saying  of  Swift,  that  *  loyalty  is  the  foible  of  the  Irish.' 
O'Connell  bore  a  leading  part  in  it;  he  on  this  occasion 
did  his  best  to  allay  differences  and  promote  a  tem- 


^  Fitzpatrick,  if  421. 


40         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

porary  reconciliation  of  the  Orangemen  and  the  Catho- 
lics, and  he  was  a  prominent  figure  in  the  reception  of 
the  monarch.  He  presented  the  King  with  a  laurel 
crown  when  he  left  Ireland,  and  pledged  himself  to 
subscribe  twenty  guineas  a  year  to  a  palace  which  it 
was  proposed  to  erect  for  him  in  Ireland.  The  ex- 
treme sycophancy  of  the  language,  which  became  usual, 
disgusted  many  of  his  friends.  Moore  wrote  in  his 
'  Diary  '  of  the  '  worse  than  Eastern  prostration  of  his 
countrymen,'  and  declared  that  they  had  been  so  long 
slaves  that  '  they  knew  no  medium  between  brawling 
rebellion  and  foot-licking  idolatry.'  Cobbett  and 
Brougham  commented  bitterly  on  the  conduct  and  lan- 
guage of  O'Connell;  and  Byron,  who  took  great  inter- 
est in  the  Catholic  cause,  which  he  had  defended  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  has  immortalized  his  indignation 
in  the  'Irish  Avatar.'  It  must  be  remembered  that 
the  visit  occurred  just  after  the  shameful  trial  of  the 
Queen,  and  that  the  news  of  her  unhappy  death  arrived 
when  George  IV.  was  in  Dublin. 

O'Connell  afterwards  indignantly  repudiated  some 
untrue  or  exaggerated  reports  of  his  proceedings  on  this 
occasion,'  and  in  this,  as  on  most  other  occasions,  if  his 
conduct  was  largely  due  to  genuine  impulse,  a  deliber- 
ate policy  mingled  with  it.  He  hoped  to  find  in  the 
visit  of  the  King  an  occasion  of  drawing  Protestants 
and  Catholics  together  and  effecting  a  reconciliation 
which  he  ardently  desired,  and  he  hoped  also,  by  an 
ostentatious  demonstration  of  Catholic  loyalty,  to  influ- 
ence favourably  the  mind  of  the  sovereign.  There  were 
some  signs  that  the  feelings  of  the  King  to  the  Catho- 
lics had  changed.  He  assured  the  people,  with  em- 
phasis, that  he  came  to  Ireland  as  the  father  of  all  his 


*  Fagan's  Life  of  O'Connell,  i.  270-374. 


GEORGE  IV.  IN  DUBLIN  41 

people.  The  Catholic  bishops  were  received  in  their 
ecclesiastical  costumes  and  with  their  golden  crosses 
and  chains,  and  Lord  Fingall,  the  head  of  the  Catholic 
laity,  was  presented  by  the  King  with  the  Order  of  St. 
Patrick.  Lord  Sidmouth,  by  the  King's  orders,  wrote 
a  letter  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  declaring  that  '  the 
testimonies  of  dutiful  and  affectionate  attachment 
which  his  Majesty  received  from  all  classes  and  de- 
scriptions of  his  Irish  subjects  had  made  the  deepest 
impression  on  his  mind,'  and  expressing  his  ardent 
wish  that  '  not  only  the  spirit  of  loyal  union  which 
now  so  generally  exists  should  remain  unabated  and 
unimpaired,  but  that  every  cause  of  irritation  would  be 
avoided  and  discountenanced.'  All  this  raised  hopes 
which  were  soon  proved  to  be  deceptive.  Before  Catho- 
lic Emancipation  was  carried  0' Council  wrote  to  Lord 
Cloncurry :  '  The  great  enemy  of  the  people  of  Ireland 
is  his  Most  Sacred  Majesty.'  ^ 

It  was  not  until  1821  that  the  Catholic  cause  re- 
vived with  any  real  chance  of  success.  O'Connell  him- 
self seemed  to  have  almost  cast  it  aside,  maintaining 
that  it  would  never  be  carried  in  the  form  which  he 
desired  in  an  unreformed  Parliament,  and  that  all  the 
efforts  of  the  Irish  should  be  directed  toward  radical 
parliamentary  reform.  He  was  accustomed  at  this 
time  to  issue  annual  letters  to  the  people  of  Ireland, 
and  in  that  which  was  published  on  the  first  day  of 
1821  he  put  forward  this  view  in  the  strongest  terms, 
defending  it  largely  on  the  ground  of  the  resignation 
of  Canning,  which  had  weakened  the  Catholic  cause  in 
the  Cabinet.  This  letter  was  answered  with  much 
severity  and  point,  though  in  rather  tawdry  eloquence, 
by  Shell,  who  entirely  denied  that  O'Connell  at  this 


*  Sept.  4,  1828.     Fitzpatrick,  i.  164. 


42         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

time  spoke  the  voice  of  the  great  body  of  Catholics. 
In  defiance  of  O'Connell's  wishes  the  Catholic  cause  in 
Parliament  was  now  in  the  strong  hands  of  Plunket, 
who  was  known  to  share  the  views  of  Grattan  about  the 
veto.  Shell  notices  that  at  a  very  numerous  meeting 
of  Catholics  which  had  recently  been  held,  a  resolu- 
tion, proposed  by  O'Connell,  expressive  of  the  unwill- 
ingness of  the  Eoman  Catholics  to  accede  to  any  eccle- 
siastical arrangement,  was  only  carried  by  a  majority 
of  six,  and  that  several  of  the  parishes  of  Dublin  con- 
fided their  petitions  unreservedly  to  Plunket  without 
placing  any  control  on  his  discretion.^ 

The  Eelief  Bill  of  1821  was  conceived  on  the  broad- 
est lines,  throwing  open  to  the  Catholics  not  only  seats 
in  Parliament,  but  also  all  offices  under  the  Crown  ex- 
cept the  Chancellorship  and  the  Lord  Lieutenancy,  but 
it  was  accompanied  by  a  Bill  giving  the  Crown  a  veto 
on  the  appointment  of  Catholic  bishops,  and  exacting 
an  oath  from  every  goriest  that  he  should  take  no  part 
in  the  election  of  any  dignitary  of  the  Church  except 
such  as  he  should  conscientiouslybelieve  to  be  of  un- 
impeachable loyalty  and  peaceable  conduct,  and  have 
no  correspondence  with  Rome  '  on  any  matter  or  thing 
which  may  interfere  with  or  affect  the  civil  duty  or 
allegiance  which  is  due  to  his  Majesty.' 

These  Bills  were  at  first  separate,  but  were  after- 
wards consolidated,  and  they  were  carried  successfully 
through  by  small  majorities  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

The  second  reading  was  carried  by  a  majority  of 
eleven;  a  proposal  to  exclude  Catholics  from  Parlia- 
ment was  thrown  out  by  a  majority  of  twelve.  When 
it  was  first  introduced  the  measure  received  the  appro- 
bation of  Bishop  Doyle,  the  ablest  of  the  Catholic  prel- 


^  McCullagh's  Memoirs  of  Sheil,  i.  145. 


PLUNKET'S  BILL,  1821  43 

ates  in  Ireland/  and  tlie  petition  of  the  English  Catho- 
lics in  its  favour  was  signed  by  seven  out  of  the  eight 
Apostolic  Vicars.  Bishop  Milner,  however,  who  had 
done  so  much  to  defeat  Grattan's  Bill  in  1813,  was  still 
inexorable,  and  actually  signed  a  petition  against  the 
Bill,  and  a  party  in  Ireland,  supported  by  several 
bishops,  and  actively  stimulated  by  O'Connell,  took  the 
same  line.  The  Bishop  and  the  priests  of  Limerick 
were  conspicuous  for  their  violence,  and  O'Connell,  in 
a  speech  in  that  town,  absurdly  and  wickedly  described 
Plunket's  Bill  as  '  more  penal  and  persecuting  than  any 
or  all  the  statutes  passed  in  the  darkest  and  most 
bigoted  period  of  Queen  Anne  and  of  the  first  two 
Georges.'^  A  proposal  of  Peel  to  exclude  Catholics 
from  the  Privy  Council  and  the  judicial  Bench  was 
defeated  by  a  majority  of  43.  The  third  reading  was 
carried  by  a  majority  of  19. 

*  I  wish  with  all  my  heart,'  O'Connell  wrote  in  a 
private  letter,  '  that  the  present  rascally  Catholic  Bill 
was  thrown  out.' '  His  wish  was  gratified  by  the  House 
of  Lords,  where  the  Bill  was  lost  on  its  second  reading 
by  a  majority  of  39.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the 
Duke  of  York  made  his  first  declaration  of  inexorable 
hostility  to  Catholic  Emancipation.  This  declaration 
contributed  largely  to  wreck  the  Bill,  but  perhaps 
hardly  more  so  than  the  attitude  of  O'Connell  and  his 
followers. 

Yet  O'Connell  with  all  his  violence  was  seldom  quite 
averse  to  compromise,  and  it  appeared  for  a  time  that 
the  advent  of  Lord  Wellesley  as  Viceroy  in  this  year 
was  about  to  produce  some  alteration  in  his  policy. 
Lord  Wellesley  was  the  first  Irishman  who  for  many 

^  Fitzpatrick's  iy*7e  of  Doyle,  '  See  Plunket's  Life,  ii.  70- 

1.147-148.  78.     Annual  Register,  1821. 

^  Fitzpatrick,  i.  71. 


44        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

years  had  been  appointed  to  that  post.  He  had  been 
an  open  advocate  of  the  Catholic  claims,  and  although 
he  took  an  early  opportunity  of  stating  that  '  he  came 
to  administer  and  not  to  change  the  law/  and  although 
his  Chief  Secretary,  Goulburn,  was  opposed  to  Catholic 
Emancipation,  his  advent  seemed  to  mark  a  consider- 
able step  of  progress.  O'Connell  attended  his  first 
levee  and  was  received  with  marked  favour;  but  the 
most  important  consequence  of  the  new  Administration 
was  the  removal  of  Saurin  from  the  great  post  of 
Attorney-General  which  he  had  held  for  nearly  fifteen 
years  and  the  substitution  of  Plunket,  who,  though 
greatly  disliked  by  O'Connell,  was  at  least  the  leading 
Irish  advocate  of  the  Catholics.  Bushe  nearly  at  the 
same  time  was  made  Chief  Justice.  O'Connell  at  once 
entered  into  a  negotiation  with  the  Government  relat- 
ing to  the  terms  on  which  the  Catholics  would  accept 
a  settlement  of  the  question,  and  these  terms  involved 
in  a  modified  and  restricted  form  the  veto  which  he 
had  so  long  opposed.  He  proposed  to  give  the  British 
Government  the  power  of  objecting  to  any  persons 
elected  to  the  episcopacy  on  the  score  of  disloyalty,  but 
the  inquiry  into  the  facts  was  to  be  delegated  exclu- 
sively to  two  Catholic  bishops,  and  their  sentence  was 
to  be  decisive.  He  also  proposed  that  the  clergy  should 
be  obliged  to  submit  to  the  Government  any  correspon- 
dence with  Rome  on  political  subjects,  though  on  these 
alone.  The  concessions  would  have  been  of  little  or  no 
value,  and  much  to  the  satisfaction  of  O'Connell  him- 
self they  were  rejected  by  the  Government.* 

The  country  was  at  this  time  in  a  state  of  great  dis- 
turbance. The  high  prices  of  agricultural  produce 
that  had  existed  during  the  war  had  come  to  an  end. 


»  Fagan's  Life  of  O'Connell,  i.  279-280. 


DISTKESS    IN    IRELAND  45 

and  attempts  to  keep  them  up  artificially  by  protective 
corn  laws  had  proved  wholly  useless.  There  was,  it  is 
true,  during  some  years  a  violent  flactuation  of  prices, 
and  in  numerous  cases  the  old  engagements  and  cove- 
nants based  on  war  prices  still  continued  in  force.  Bat 
in  1821  and  1822  the  fall  was  sudden  and  decisive,  and 
a  partial  failure  of  the  potato  crop  was  at  once  followed 
by  famine  and  by  the  pestilence  that  follows  in  its  trail. 
The  evil  was  not  confined  to  Ireland.  In  every  portion 
of  the  British  Isles  the  years  after  the  conclusion  of  the 
great  French  war  had  been  years  of  acute  distress 
among  the  agricultural  and  landed  classes  and  of 
much  disorder  and  discontent.  But  in  Ireland  the  evil 
was  far  more  desperate  than  in  England  or  Scotland. 
Population  had  of  late  years  multiplied  with  an  appall- 
ing rapidity  and  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  resources 
of  the  country,  and  a  minute  subdivision  of  the  soil 
had  accompanied  it.  The  whole  economical  fabric  had 
come  to  depend  on  the  continuance  of  high  prices  and 
high  rents,  and  no  people  in  Europe  were  less  fitted 
than  the  Irish  to  adapt  themselves  to  changed  circum- 
stances or  were  placed  under  circumstances  more  un- 
favourable. There  was  an  absentee  aristocracy.  There 
was  a  poor  and  extravagant  gentry.  There  was  a 
pauper,  improvident,  utterly  ignorant  peasantry  de- 
pending for  their  whole  subsistence  on  the  cultivation 
of  the  soil.  A  hierarchy  of  idle  middlemen  stood  be- 
tween them  and  the  real  owner.  This  system  existed 
over  nearly  the  whole  of  Ireland,  and  in  some  parts 
there  were  as  many  as  six  or  seven  middlemen  between 
the  proprietor  of  the  fee  and  the  actual  occupier.  All 
these  had  to  derive  their  profit  from  the  soil,  and  the  ex- 
treme competition  for  land  in  a  rapidly  growing  popula- 
tion had  forced  up  its  rent  far  beyond  its  intrinsic  value. 
These  excessive  rents  were  not  in  general  either  ex- 


46        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

acted  or  received  by  the  true  landlord.  Under  the  sys- 
tem of  long  leases  which  generally  prevailed  the  rental 
received  by  the  owners  of  the  soil  was  usually  moderate, 
but  the  actual  cultivator  was  ground  down  by  the  upper 
tenants  and  lived  in  the  most  abject  poverty.  Except 
on  the  sea  coast,  where  fish  could  be  obtained,  his  ordi- 
nary diet  was  potatoes  and  water  with  a  little  salt,  and 
there  was  a  time  between  the  going  out  of  the  old  and 
the  coming  in  of  the  new  potatoes  when  even  this  could 
not  be  easily  obtained,  and  when  vast  multitudes  lived 
only  by  migratory  begging.  Their  homes  were  mud 
hovels,  almost  without  furniture,  where  whole  families 
lay  huddled  together,  without  bedsteads,  in  the  straw. 
There  was  no  poor  law.  In  three  provinces  there  w^as 
hardly  anything  corresponding  to  the  English  middle 
class;  hardly  any  of  that  manufacturing  industry  which 
in  a  prosperous  country  absorbs  a  surplus  agricultural 
population  and  relieves  the  pressure  on  the  soil.  Agri- 
cultural wages  had  sunk  almost  to  starvation  limits 
and  settled  employment  could  be  rarely  obtained,  for 
the  absenteeism  of  the  rich  and  the  subdivision  of  land 
into  farms  so  minute  that  they  could  be  easily  culti- 
vated by  the  farmer  and  his  family  left  very  little  space 
for  independent  agricultural  labour.  In  the  evidence 
he  gave  before  the  Select  Committee  in  1825,  O'Con- 
nell  mentioned  that  in  his  own  county  of  Kerry  the 
usual  wages  of  an  agricultural  labourer  were  %d.  a  day 
without  a  meal  and  4fZ.  with  it;  that  constant  employ- 
ment was  almost  unknown,  and  that  wages  in  a  large 
proportion  of  cases  were  not  paid  in  money  but  in  food. 
In  the  famine  year  of  1822,  he  said,  many  labourers 
cheerfully  worked  in  Kerry  for  2d.  a  day  without  vic- 
tuals, being  paid  in  money.  ^ 

*  First  Report  from  Select  Committee  on  the  State  of  Ireland. 
(February  35,  1825.) 


TITHES  47 

Few  things  are  so  terrible  as  a  dense,  ignorant,  and 
rapidly  increasing  population,  with  no  adequate  de- 
mand for  their  labour,  with  no  savings  or  prospect  of 
saving,  with  no  legal  provision  for  the  destitute  and 
the  unemployed.  This  was  the  situation  in  Ireland, 
and  it  was  greatly  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  the 
Church,  which  was  not  the  Church  of  the  poor,  was 
supported  by  tithes  levied  with  extreme  inequality  and 
injustice  on  the  very  poorest,  who  had  in  addition  to 
support  their  own  clergy.  There  are  few  methods  of 
levying  money  which  have  been  in  general  more  un- 
popular than  tithes,  this  impost  being,  as  Paley  ob- 
served, *  not  only  a  tax  on  industry,  but  the  industry 
that  feeds  mankind,'  and  of  course  the  natural  objec- 
tions to  it  were  immeasurably  intensified  when  it  was 
levied  from  a  half-starving  peasantry,  who  derived  no 
religious  benefit  from  the  ministrations  of  those  they 
were  compelled  to  pay.  A  second  rent,  raised  from 
the  most  impoverished  classes  of  the  community  in 
favour  of  men  who  contributed  nothing  to  production, 
and  who  were  opposed  to  the  religious  convictions  of 
those  who  paid  them,  was  a  grievance  that  could  not 
fail,  when  the  Catholics  acquired  some  measure  of  self- 
confidence,  to  produce  a  general  conflagration.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  opposition  to  tithes  had  been  one 
of  the  chief  objects  of  the  Whiteboys,  and  the  land- 
lords were  said  sometimes  to  have  instigated  them. 
The  capital  injustice  of  the  old  Irish  Parliament  in  ex- 
empting pasture  from  tithes  had  constituted  a  shameful 
privilege  in  favour  of  the  richest  and  largest  farmers; 
while  even  the  other  tithes  were  levied  unequally  in 
the  different  provinces.  It  was  stated  before  the  Select 
Committee  to  which  I  have  referred  that  an  occupying 
tenant  in  Munster,  having  half  an  acre  of  potatoes — 
which  was  the  amount  deemed  necessary  for  the  sup- 


48  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

port  of  a  peasant  family — sometimes  paid  six,  eight, 
ten,  or  even  twelve  shillings  for  the  tithe  of  that  half- 
acre,  while  his  immediate  neighbours,  who  had  large 
farms  in  pasturage,  paid  nothing.  In  the  great  pas- 
ture counties,  indeed,  the  tithe  proctor  usually  found 
little  tillage,  except  the  potato  plots  of  the  very  poor, 
and  was  therefore  obliged  to  exact  with  a  greater 
minuteness  his  legal  dues/ 

The  difficulty  of  collecting  tithes,  owing  to  the  hos- 
tility of  the  people,  and  still  more  to  the  extreme  mul- 
tiplication of  small  dues,'  made  it  absohitely  necessary 
for  the  clergyman  to  farm  out  the  collection  to  a  tithe 
proctor,  who  usually  paid  him  a  fixed  sum,  making  his 
profits  out  of  the  peasantry.  The  tithe  proctors  corre- 
Bj^onded  closely  with  the  middlemen.  They  were  very 
often  themselves  Catholics,  and  they  formed  one  of  the 
most  unhealth}",  opi">ressive,  and  disturbing  elements  in 
Irish  life.  Add  to  all  this  the  habits  of  chronic  lawless- 
ness and  conspiracy  which  had  come  down  from  a  dis- 
tant i:>ast,  and  which,  though  certainly  not  without 
explanation  or  palliation,  fatally  obstructed  Irish  im- 
provement. Optimist  statesmen  pointed  to  the  increase 
of  exports  and  imports  since  the  Union.  They  urged 
that  Belfast  and  the  linen  trade  had  greatly  advanced; 
that  some  attempts  had  been  made,  with  temporary 
success,  to  introduce  the  manufacture  of  the  coarser 
linens  into  the  southern  and  western  parts  of  Ireland; 
that  the  cattle  trade  with  England  was  large  and  flour- 
ishing.    But  all  the  detailed  inquiries  that  were  made 

*  Seethe  very  remarkable  ev-  thing  each,  and   that  a  large 

idence  of  J.  L.  Foster.  proportion  of    the    defaulters 

^  Shortly  before  the  tithes  in  throughout  the  country  were 
Ireland  were  commuted  it  was  for  sums  not  exceeding  nine- 
stated  oflQcially  that  in  a  single  pence.  See  the  Speech  of  Lit- 
parish  in  Carlow  the  sum  owed  tleton  on  February  20,  1834. 
by  222  defaulters  was  one  far-  Hansard,  xxi.  577. 


CHANGES  IN  LAND  TENURE  49 

into  the  state  of  the  Irish  poor  between  1815  and  the 
great  famine  concur  in  representing  it  as  a  condition 
of  wretchedness  hardly  paralleled  in  Europe.  The 
population  almost  doubled  between  the  Union  and  the 
great  famine  without  any  corresponding  and  propor- 
tionate increase  in  their  means  of  subsistence.  Few 
persons,  I  think,  can  compare  the  state  of  Ireland  as  it 
appears  in  the  pages  of  Arthur  Young  with  the  parlia- 
mentary inquiries  of  1824  and  1825,  or  with  the  evi- 
dence collected  twenty  years  later  by  the  Devon  Com- 
mission, without  arriving  at  the  conclusion  that  the 
condition  of  the  great  masses  of  the  population  had 
rather  retrograded  than  advanced. 

Great  changes  also  in  the  tenure  of  land  had  taken 
place.  From  the  time  of  Arthur  Young  it  had  been 
the  settled  conviction  of  the  more  intelligent  Irish 
landlords  that  the  abolition  of  the  middleman  was  the 
first  condition  of  improvement,  and  during  the  last 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century  much  had  been  accom- 
plished in  this  direction.  The  fall  of  prices  that  fol- 
lowed the  peace  vastly  accelerated  the  movement,  but 
it  was  also  unfortunately  accompanied  by  a  great  trans- 
formation of  leasehold  farms  into  tenancies  at  will. 
The  middleman  had  been  a  long  leaseholder,  but  his 
sub-tenants  were  usually  tenants  at  will,  and  when  the 
former  disappeared  the  tenure  of  the  latter  was  not 
changed.  It  was  noticed  that  at  this  time  an  unusually 
large  proportion  of  the  more  substantial  farmers  who 
were  Protestants  emigrated,^  and  that  Catholics  who 
had  more  recently  lived  in  great  poverty  and  who  were 
less  enterprising  took  their  places.  Landlords  had 
come  to  recognise  the  evils  that  had  grown  up  under 
the  old  system  of  long  leases,  and  especially  the  im- 


*  This  is  mentioned  by  O'Connell  in  his  evidence  in  1825. 

VOL.  II.  4 


50        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

possibility  of  enforcing  clauses  against  sub-letting  and 
subdivision,  while  the  leaseholders  who  had  entered 
into  their  contracts  at  the  time  of  war  prices  were  un- 
able to  fulfil  their  contracts.  Many  became  bankrupt 
and  either  threw  up  their  farms  or  consented  to  hold 
them  at  a  reduced  rent  as  tenants  at  will.  There  was 
much  uncertainty  about  the  future  of  agriculture  and 
about  the  normal  range  of  prices;  contracts  of  all  kinds 
in  agriculture  became  more  difficult,  and  both  land- 
lords and  tenants  were  less  disposed  to  bind  themselves 
for  the  future.  A  stamp  duty  payable  by  the  tenants 
also  contributed  to  discourage  leases,  and  under  all 
these  influences  they  greatly  diminished.  At  the  same 
time  the  evil  of  sub-letting  was  more  strongly  felt,  and 
especially  the  evil  of  a  pauper  cottier  tenantry  breaking 
up  the  land  into  minute  fractions,  exhausting  and 
ruining  it  by  bad  cultivation,  and  with  no  capital  to 
restore  it. 

As  the  pressure  of  agricultural  distress  increased 
landlords  discouraged  such  tenancies,  and  it  in  conse- 
quence became  more  difficult  to  obtain  a  plot  of  land. 
Evictions  terribly  multiplied  either  from  the  non-pay- 
ment of  rent,  or  from  the  bankruptcy  of  a  middleman, 
which  often  entailed  the  ruin  of  a  crowd  of  sub-tenants, 
or  from  a  simple  desire  of  landlords  to  improve  their 
estates  by  a  consolidation  of  farms.  The  law  expressly 
encouraged  such  a  policy.  There  was  a  scandalous  pro- 
vision that  every  superior  tenant  had  the  right  of  dis- 
tress over  the  immediate  occupier,  so  that  it  was  pos- 
sible for  the  occupier  to  have  paid  his  rent  to  the  mid- 
dleman who  was  his  immediate  landlord  and  yet  to  be 
made  liable  for  default  of  a  tenant  of  a  higher  grade. 
An  Act  of  1817  for  the  first  time  enabled  the  landlord 
in  Ireland  to  distrain  growing  crops.  The  power  had 
long  existed  in  England,  but  in  Ireland  it  was  pecu- 


AGRARIAN   RELATIONS  61 

liarly  oppressive  owing  to  the  custom  of  sub-letting  land 
several  deep,  as  each  tenant  in  the  grade  of  middleman 
had  the  power  of  distraint.  More  than  one  Act  had 
been  passed  since  the  peace  for  the  purpose  of  cheapen- 
ing and  facilitating  the  process  of  eviction  or  distress. 
They  were  intended  to  assist  the  landlord  in  enforcing 
his  rights  in  the  face  of  agrarian  conspiracy,  but  they 
also  much  stimulated  disturbances  in  the  south. 

O'Connell  described  this  system  in  detail  in  his  evi- 
dence before  the  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons 
in  1825,  and  he  noticed  the  extreme  harshness  of  the 
lower  orders  in  Ireland  in  their  business  relations  with 
one  another.  *  I  have  known,'  he  said,  '  persons  who 
would  be  ready  to  die  for  one  another  in  personal  quar- 
rels as  harsh  about  one  shilling  or  sixpence  as  if  they 
had  never  known  one  another. '  Whenever  any  of  the 
middleman- tenants  differ  about  their  accounts,  the  man 
who  claims  more  than  the  other  has  paid  or  is  willing 
to  pay  settles  the  dispute  by  distraining  the  actual  occu- 
pier. Many  too  of  the  real  landlords  were  to  blame. 
*  They  were  much  involved  in  debt  and  could  not  get 
their  living,  and  used  their  peasants  as  harshly  as  the 
peasants  did  one  another.'  In  general,  however,  as 
another  observer  noticed,  ^  rents  were  higher,  were 
sooner  called  for,  and  more  rigidly  exacted  in  propor- 
tion as  the  middleman  descended  in  the  scale  of  society 
and  approximated  to  the  degree  of  the  peasant.' 
'  Where  the  tenant  held  directly  under  the  head  land- 
lord his  comforts  were  much  more  regarded,  and  in 
general  the  rent  was  less  exorbitant  and  the  right  of 
exaction  less  oppressive.  ^ 


^  Ferguson  and  Vance,  Ten-  mittee    (1825).       See,    too,    a 

ure  and  Improvement  of  Land  Speech  of  the  Earl  of  Darnley 

in  Ireland,  p.  184.      Foster's  on  the  State  of  Ireland  (April 

evidence  before  the  Select  Com-  18,  1824). 


52         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

In  1826  a  very  important  measure,  known  as  the 
Sub-letting  Act/  was  carried.  It  was  imitated  from  a 
Scotch  Act,  and  intended  to  put  down  as  far  as  possible 
the  system  of  middlemen  and  sub-letting.  It  forbade 
all  sub-letting  of  land  under  future  leases  of  less  than 
ninety-nine  years,  or  lives  or  years  renewable  for  ever, 
without  the  express  written  consent  of  the  landlord. 
It  deprived  the  middleman  who  sub-let  in  defiance  of 
the  law  of  all  power  of  recovering  his  rent,  making  the 
transaction  wholly  null  and  void,  and  it  extended  the 
same  provision  to  the  sub-letting,  which  in  innumer- 
able cases  had  taken  place  in  land  held  under  old  leases 
that  contained  clauses  against  it.  All  transactions 
made  in  violation  of  these  clauses  were  made  null  and 
void  unless  they  Avere  authorised  in  w^riting  by  the  land- 
lord. If  a  tenant  who  sub-let  by  assent  failed  to  pay 
his  rent,  the  landlord  might  give  notice  to  the  sub- 
tenants to  pay  their  rents  to  himself.  This  Act  was  a 
serious  blow  to  the  ruinous  system  of  breaking  up  land 
into  minute  tenancies,  held  by  a  pauper  tenantry,  but 
it  produced  many  evictions;  it  greatly  added  to  the 
difficulty  of  obtaining  land  at  a  time  when  population 
was  vastly  increasing;  it  was  vehemently  attacked,  and 
it  was  remodelled  and  in  part  repealed  in  1832. 

The  chronic  lawlessness  is  sufficiently  shown  by  the 
constant  and  drastic  laws  that  w^ere  put  in  force  to  re- 
press it.  Tithes,  high  rents,  evictions,  the  consolida- 
tion of  farms,  the  transformation  of  arable  land  into 
pasture;  and  sometimes  the  excessive  dues  that  were 
exacted  by  priests,  were  the  chief  causes,  but  every 
local  quarrel  speedily  assumed  the  form  of  organised 
outrage,  and  the  combination  of  extreme  idleness  and 
utter  destitution,  produced  by  the  smallness  of  the 


^?Geo.  IV.  c.  29. 


AGRARIAN    CRIME  53 

farms  and  by  the  absence  of  steady  agricultural  labour, 
had  greatly  strengthened  the  disposition  to  lawless  en- 
terprise. Its  outbreaks  were  not  always  due  to  distress 
or  confined  to  the  poorest  districts.  Lord  Whitworth 
had  noticed  their  great  prevalence  in  1811,  1812,  and 
1813  when  the  high  war  prices  had  given  much  pros- 
perity to  farming  and  produced  a  real  improvement  in 
labourers'  wages,'  and  there  is  a  remarkable  letter  of 
Peel  in  which  he  described  Tipperary  as  '  by  far  the 
most  troublesome  county  in  Ireland,'  and  attributes  its 
turbulence  '  to  sheer  wickedness,  encouraged  by  the 
apathy  of  one  set  of  magistrates  and  the  half  con- 
nivance of  another.'  '  For  the  last  thirty  years,'  he 
adds,  '  and  probably  for  the  last  three  hundred,  this 
same  county  of  Tipperary  has  been  conspicuous  even 
in  the  Irish  annals  of  violence  and  barbarity,  having  less 
excuse  in  the  distress  and  suffering  of  its  inhabitants 
than  most  other  parts  of  Ireland.  But  there  is  more 
than  one  district  in  the  south  of  Ireland  in  which 
plenty  and  prosperity  incite  to  crime  rather  than  re- 
press it. ' ' 

Peel  was  a  harsh  judge  of  Irish  life,  which  he  cor- 
dially detested,  but  O'Connell  himself  clearly  recog- 
nised the  fact  that  the  organisers  of  crime  were  not 
usually  the  very  poorest.  Torrens  mentions  that  he 
once  said  to  him  that  poverty  was  at  the  root  of  the 
agrarian  evils.  O'Connell  replied  with  a  melancholy 
smile,  '  There  is  no  danger  in  poverty;  it  is  the  smug, 
saucy  and  venturous  youth  of  the  farmer  class  that  plot 
and  perpetrate  all  the  predial  mischief. ' '     At  the  same 


*  Speech  of  Sir  H.  Parnell  on  '  Torrens's  Twenty  Years  of 

Disturbances  in  Ireland  (June  Parliamentary   Life,    p.    299; 

24,  1823),  p.  25.  so,  too,  in  one  of  his  Speeches 

'  Peel's    Correspondence,    ii.  in  1825,  he  said  :    '  Whiteboy 

125.  acts  are  for  the  most  part  per- 


54  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

time  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  great  outbursts  of 
agrarian  crime  have  usually  followed  some  great  in- 
crease of  suSering,  and  this  was  certainly  the  case  in 
1822  and  1823.  Famine  and  pestilence  stalked  through 
the  land,  and  there  was  scarcely  a  county  that  was  not 
convulsed  by  outrage.  Lord  Wellesley  stated  in  the 
beginning  of  1822  that  disturbances  had  occurred  in 
no  less  than  sixteen  counties  of  Leinster  and  Munster; 
that  in  the  province  of  Connaught  the  great  body  of 
the  people  had  been  sworn;  and  that  even  in  Ulster 
'  strong  indications  have  been  generally  manifested  of 
resistance  to  the  process  of  the  law.'  During  the  pre- 
ceding thirty-one  years  it  was  stated  that  no  less  than 
twenty-six  had  been  years  of  actual  insurrection  or  dis- 
turbance/ 

Coercion  Acts  in  abundance  had  been  enacted.  An 
Arms  Act,  allowing  domiciliary  visits  and  prohibiting 
the  use  of  arms,  was  now  part  of  the  standing  law  of 
the  country,  and  there  was  a  Peace  Preservation  Act 
enacted  in  1814,  strengthening  the  police  establish- 
ments of  Ireland;  but  the  Insurrection  Act,  prohibit- 
ing persons  in  proclaimed  districts  from  leaving  their 
houses  at  night,  had  been  suffered  to  lapse  in  1818.  It 
was  revived  in  1822,  and  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  was 
again  suspended.  All  the  horrible  forms  of  agrarian 
crime  habitual  in  Ireland — murder,  incendiary  fires, 
'  carding  '  or  torturing  obnoxious  persons,  systematic 
persecution  of  all  who  infringed  the  popular  agrarian 
code — were  going  on,  and  the  prospect  of  the  future 


petrated  by  sturdy,  lazv  fellows  Sir  Henry  Parnell  on  Disturb- 

who   are   unwilling  to  work.'  ances    in    Ireland,    (June  24, 

Cusack,   i.   456.      See  also  on  1823).      This  speech  is  an  ad- 

this  subject,  Lewis,  Irish  Dis-  mirable  summary  of  the  whole 

turlances,  pp.  89-92.  subjects  it  treats,  pp.  7-16. 
*  See  the   great    Speech   of 


THE  AGRARIAN  PROSPECT  55 

was  very  dark.  There  seemed  no  check  on  the  multi- 
plication of  a  people  whose  priests  always  preached  early 
marriages,  and  who  were  absolutely  destitute  of  those  in- 
dustrial habits  that  chiefly  tend  to  retard  marriages, 
while  the  most  powerful  influences  stimulated  the  sub- 
division of  farms.  Every  parent,  when  his  child  came 
of  age,  demanded  it,  and  the  whole  popular  sentiment 
was  in  its  favour.  The  law  which  gave  votes  to  the 
405.  freeholders  gave  the  landlords  the  strongest  in- 
ducement to  take  the  course  which  on  other  grounds 
was  most  popular,  for  by  multiplying  dependent  voters, 
who  as  yet  were  absolutely  subservient  to  their  will, 
they  greatly  increased  their  consequence  and  power. 
Far-seeing  politicians  looked  almost  with  despair  on 
the  prospect.  *  If  six  million  discontented  Irish  are  to 
become  twelve  millions  without  any  change  being 
effected  in  their  temper  and  habits,  while  they  are 
every  day  learning  how  to  evade  the  violences  of  coer- 
cive laws  and  to  make  the  system  of  secret  association 
more  general  and  more  manageable,  a  power  will  grow 
up  on  the  side  of  England  of  such  magnitude  as  may 
be  able  to  cope  with  her  power  and  involve  her  in  all 
the  calamities  belonging  to  a  new  effort  to  conquer 
Ireland.'  ' 

Nature  in  her  own  good  time,  and  by  her  own 
ghastly  surgery,  at  length  corrected  the  evil,  and  the 
great  famine  and  the  gigantic  and  long-continued  emi- 
gration that  followed  at  last  turned  the  more  fertile 
parts  of  Ireland  into  a  thinly  populated  pasture  coun- 
try, in  which  a  small  farming  population  lived  in  com- 
fort, and  in  which  agricultural  labour,  which  was  once 
so  terribly  redundant,  had  become  extremely  scarce. 
The  problem,  however,  for  a  long  time  seemed  almost 


'  Sir  H.  Parnell,  p.  18. 


56        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

hopeless,  and  certainly  the  introduction  of  Catholics 
into  the  Imperial  Parliament,  however  just  and  neces- 
sary, was  neither  the  only  nor  the  most  important  rem- 
edy that  was  needed. 

During  the  existence  of  the  Irish  Parliament  the 
essential  evils  of  the  Irish  land  system  appear  to  have 
been  little  realised.  The  Parliament  was  a  parliament 
of  landlords.  The  population  was  comparatively  small, 
and  the  war  prices  and  the  great  prosperity  of  the  corn 
trade  with  England  during  the  last  years  of  the  cen- 
tury made  men  insensible  to  the  dangers  of  excessive 
subdivision  of  the  soil.  This  Parliament  did  much  by 
the  system  of  bounties  to  support  different  forms  of 
non-agricultural  industry,  but  it  fully  accepted  the 
doctrine  which  then  prevailed  in  England,  and  indeed 
in  most  countries,  that  the  education  of  the  poor  was 
a  matter  for  churches  and  individuals  and  societies,  but 
not  a  great  national  duty.  Nothing  is  more  remark- 
able in  the  speeches  of  Grattan  than  the  almost  entire 
absence  of  those  agrarian  questions  which  have  in  mod- 
ern days  become  so  prominent.  The  one  great  agrarian 
grievance  which  he  recognised  was  the  grievance  of 
tithes,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  made  several  earnest 
though  unsuccessful  efforts  to  remedy  it. 

The  early  speeches  of  O'Connell  were,  in  this  re- 
spect, not  very  different  from  those  of  Grattan.  The 
tithe  system  was  the  one  agrarian  grievance  which  he 
keenly  felt.  No  one,  I  think,  can  blame  him  for  his 
hostility  to  it.  Bishop  Doyle,  who  was  a  man  of  higher 
character,  had  expressed  his  hope  that  in  Ireland  ^  the 
hatred  of  tithes  would  be  as  lasting  as  the  love  of  jus- 
tice.' Whenever  agrarian  distress  became  acute  the 
war  against  tithes  broke  out  afresh,  and  it  was  followed 
by  gross  and  constant  outrage,  by  frequent  and  some- 
times bloody  collisions  between  the   people  and   the 


REFORMS  IN  THE  MAGISTRACY  57 

police.  O'Connell  did  undoubtedly  advocate  and  en- 
courage '  passive  resistance  '  to  the  payment  of  titlies, 
and  this  in  a  population  like  that  of  Ireland  inevitably 
led  to  crime. 

One  measure  of  considerable  value,  dealing  with 
this  question,  was  carried  by  the  administration  of  Lord 
Wellesley.  It  was  the  Tithe  Composition  Act  of  1823  ^ 
which  substituted  for  the  existing  tithe  system  a  fixed 
annual  sum  regulated  by  the  average  price  of  wheat  or 
oats,  and  binding  on  both  parties  for  twenty-one  years. 
It  provided  that  where  the  composition  was  made, 
owners  of  land  should  let  their  land  tithe  free,  or  the 
occupier  paying  the  composition  might  deduct  it  from 
his  rent.  It  equalised  the  burden  by  making  it  a  tax 
according  to  the  acreable  value  of  a  farm,  and  abolished 
the  exemption  of  pasture  land  which  was  the  greatest 
grievance  of  the  system.  Unfortunately  this  Act  was 
not  compulsory,  and  though  it  was  adopted  on  a  large 
number  of  estates,  the  greater  part  of  Ireland  remained 
outside  its  scope.  The  grazing  farmers  not  unnaturally 
disliked  it,  and  it  only  touched  the  fringe  of  the 
question. 

Something  also  was  done  to  strengthen  and  improve 
the  police  force,  and  there  was  a  much  needed  revision 
of  the  magistracy.  There  was  a  widespread  distrust 
of  the  magistracy  and  a  very  general  belief  that  large 
numbers  of  them  were  amenable  to  bribes,  and  it  was 
remarked  that  one  of  the  effects  of  the  Union  had  been 
that,  owing  to  the  increased  absenteeism  of  the  Protes- 
tant gentry,  the  difficulty  of  finding  proper  persons  to 
fulfil  the  office  of  magistrate  had  greatly  augmented." 


»  Geo.  IV.  c.  99. 

'  See  the   Civil  Correspondence  of  the  Duke  of   Wellington 
{Jreland)  p.  85. 


58         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

The  establishment  in  1823  of  Petty  Sessions  in  which 
the  magistrates  sat  together  in  open  court  instead  of 
giving  isolated  and  individual  decisions  was  a  real  and 
important  reform.  It  produced  probably  a  substantial 
improvement  in  the  magistracy,  and  it  certainly  im- 
mensely increased  the  confidence  of  the  people. 

The  Catholic  question,  however,  now  dominated 
over  all  others  in  Ireland,  and  O'Connell  had  entered 
upon  the  brilliant  period  of  his  life.  The  long  series 
of  disappointed  hopes  and  abortive  efforts  had  kindled 
among  the  Irish  Catholics  a  not  unnatural  exasperation, 
and  O'Connell  gave  the  keynote  to  a  new  movement 
by  a  speech  in  which  he  declared  that  there  was  a  great 
unused  power  which  must  be  called  into  action  if  the 
Catholic  cause  was  to  succeed — the  priesthood  of  Ire- 
land. Up  to  this  time  their  appearances  in  politics 
had  been  very  rare,  and  probably  on  the  whole  on  the 
side  of  the  Government.  The  ministers  had  more  than 
once  entered  into  negotiations  with  Catholic  bishops. 
In  the  rebellion  of  1798  it  is  true  that  a  few  priests  had 
been  active  leaders  of  the  rebels,  but  the  United  Ireland 
movement  in  its  conception  w^as  rather  Presbyterian 
and  freethinking  than  Catholic,  and  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  the  priesthood  were  on  the  whole  a  restrain- 
ing influence,  and  that  they  often  gave  useful  secret 
information  to  the  Government.  The  Union  was  the 
first  struggle  since  the  Revolution  in  which  they  played 
a  considerable  part,  and  it  was  all  exerted  in  support 
of  that  measure.  Their  interference  at  elections  in  the 
years  that  followed  appears  to  have  been  very  unusual, 
and  the  Catholic  405.  freeholders  might  almost  always 
be  counted  upon  as  completely  as  the  Protestant  tenants 
to  act  in  obedience  to  the  direction  of  their  landlords. 

In  the  '  "Wellington  Correspondence,'  however,  there 
is  one  remarkable  letter  describing  an  election  in  Tip- 


THE  CATHOLIC  ASSOCIATION  59 

perary  during  the  general  election  of  1807,  which  seems 
to  foreshadow  later  events.  *  There  never  was  any- 
thing/ writes  Arthur  Wellesley,  *  equal  to  the  violence 
of  the  priests,  and  of  the  whole  Roman  Catholic  body 
in  the  county  of  Tipperary.  They  have  fomented  seri- 
ous riots  to  frighten  Bagwell's  freeholders,  and  prevent 
them  from  going  to  the  poll.  The  priests  have  in- 
veighed against  him  from  the  altars,  and  have  success- 
fully endeavoured  to  prevail  upon  the  Catholic  tenantry 
to  oppose  the  wishes  of  their  landlords.' '  But  cases 
of  this  kind  appear  to  have  been  rare,  and,  although 
ecclesiastical  influence  was  largely  employed  by  O'Con- 
nell  in  creating  and  consolidating  the  opposition  to  the 
veto,  this  opposition  was  directed  to  a  purely  ecclesiasti- 
cal question,  and  was  for  the  most  part  confined  to  the 
higher  clergy.  Meetings,  however,  in  favour  of  Catho- 
lic Emancipation  were  sometimes  held  in  the  chapels, 
and  there  were  some  few  priests  in  different  parts  of 
Ireland  who  already  took  an  active  part  in  politics.' 

It  was  the  great  work  of  the  new  Catholic  Associa- 
tion which  was  founded  in  1823  to  bring  the  priesthood 
as  a  body  into  Irish  politics,  and  it  soon  became  one  of 
the  most  powerful  political  bodies  known  in  history. 
O'Connell  and  Sheil  were  now  cordially  united,  and 
their  extraordinary  eloquence  soon  electrified  the  coun- 
try; but  it  was  especially  to  the  untiring  energy  of 
O'Connell,  to  his  infinite  skill  in  seizing  opportunities 
and  managing  men,  to  the  complete  self-devotion  with 
which  he  threw  himself  into  the  cause,  and  to  the  in- 
domitable courage  with  which  he  encountered  difficulty 
and  disappointment,  that  it  chiefly  owed  its  success. 
The  original  members  of  the  new  Association,  who 


*  Wellington  Correspondence  {Ireland),  p.  72. 
'  See  Fagan's  Life  of  O'Connell,  i.  283-384. 


60  LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

were  only  forty-seven,  undertook  to  provide  an  annual 
subscription  of  one  guinea.  In  order  to  evade  the  Con- 
vention Act  it  was  not  representative,  but  open  to  all 
subscribers;  it  was  not  exclusively  Catholic,  and  all  its 
meetings  were  open  to  reporters.  It  at  first  seemed  to 
excite  little  interest,  and  at  one  of  its  earliest  weekly 
meetings  there  was  not  even  the  requisite  quorum  of 
ten  members,  but  O'Connell  went  oat  into  the  street 
and  absolutely  forced  some  Maynooth  students,  whom 
he  found  standing  before  a  neighbouring  bookshop,  to 
attend. 

In  1824  he  devised  the  expjedient  of  a  Catholic  rent 
to  be  collected  in  every  parish,  and  this  at  once  gave 
a  new  character  and  impulse  to  the  Association.  The 
sum  to  be  levied  was  only  Id.  a  month  or  a  shilling  a 
year.  It  was  to  be  collected  in  every  parish  and  through 
the  instrumentality  of  the  priest,  and  thus  priest  and 
people  were  drawn  into  the  movement.  Before  the 
close  of  1824  the  rent  reached  from  600/.  to  900/.  a 
week,  providing  ample  funds  for  the  support  of  the 
movement  and  giving  it  a  representative  character  of 
the  most  formidable  description.  Before  another  year 
had  passed  the  Association  had  10,000/.  invested  in  the 
funds,  and  was  in  the  receipt  of  an  income  of  1,000/., 
and  sometimes  even  1,200/.,  a  week.  What  was  still 
more  important,  it  formed  a  kind  of  Parliament  which 
took  cognisance  of  all  political  and  social  grievances, 
and  to  which  Catholics  from  all  parts  of  the  country 
looked  for  protection  in  the  law  courts.  It  was  a  great 
democratic  organisation,  but  it  included  Lords  Clanri- 
carde,  Fitzwilliam,  Fingall,  Cloncurry,  Gormanstown, 
and  several  other  peers  and  large  landowners  of  both 
religions. 

The  speeches  of  O'Connell  and  Shell  at  constant 
meetings  kept  up  the  excitement,  and  that  strange. 


RICHARD  LALOR  SHEIL  61 

unrivalled  magnetic  power  which  O'Connell  exercised 
over  the  great  masses  of  his  countrymen  was  soon  at  its 
height.  Sheil  at  this  time  co-operated  cordially  with 
him,  and  though  he  never  attained  anything  approach- 
ing O'Connell's  ascendency  over  the  people,  he  was 
only  second  to  him  in  the  power  of  impassioned  oratory. 
He  was  one  of  the  many  examples  of  splendid  oratorical 
powers  clogged  by  insuperable  natural  defects.  His 
person  was  diminutive  and  wholly  devoid  of  dignity; 
his  voice  shrill,  harsh,  and  often  rising  into  a  positive 
shriek;  his  action  violent,  theatrical,  and  ungraceful. 
He  was  a  poet  and  a  brilliant  and  successful  dramatist, 
and  it  was,  perhaps,  in  consequence  of  the  habits  he 
acquired  in  those  fields  that  his  speeches,  though  often 
extremely  beautiful  as  compositions,  were  always  a  little 
overcharged  with  ornament  and  a  little  too  carefully 
elaborated.  In  their  highly  ornate  character  they  bear 
some  resemblance  to  the  speeches  of  Canning,  and  the 
best  of  them  will  hardly,  I  think,  suffer  by  the  com- 
parison. They  seem  exactly  to  fulfil  Burke's  descrip- 
tion of  perfect  oratory — '  half  poetry,  half  prose;  '  yet 
we  feel  that  their  ornaments,  however  beautiful  in 
themselves,  offend  by  their  profusion.  Two  very  high 
excellences  he  possessed  to  a  pre-eminent  degree — the 
power  of  combining  extreme  preparation  with  the 
greatest  passion  and  of  blending  argument  wuth  decla- 
mation. There  are  few  speakers  from  whom  it  would 
be  possible  to  cite  so  many  passages  with  all  the  sus- 
tained rhythm  and  flow  of  declamation,  yet  consisting 
wholly  of  condensed  arguments.  He  w^as  a  great 
master  of  irony,  and,  unlike  O'Connell,  could  adapt  it 
either  to  a  vulgar  or  to  a  refined  audience.  He  had 
but  little  readiness,  and  almost  always  prepared  the 
language  as  well  as  the  substance  of  his  speeches;  but 
he  seems  to  have  carefully  followed  the  example  of 


62        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Cicero  in  studying  the  case  of  his  opponents  as  fully  as 
his  own,  and  was  thus  enabled  to  anticipate  with  great 
accuracy  the  course  of  the  debate.  He  nearly  always 
dazzled  and  pleased  even  when  he  failed  to  move  the 
passions  or  convince  the  reason. 

In  almost  every  respect  O'Connell  differed  from 
him.  Had  he  been  a  man  of  second-rate  talent,  he 
would  have  imitated  some  of  the  great  orators  who 
adorned  the  Irish  Parliament:  he  would  have  studied 
epigram  like  Grattan,  or  irony  like  Plunket,  or  polished 
declamation  like  Curran.  He  seems,  however,  to  have 
early  felt  that  neither  the  character  of  his  mind  nor  the 
career  he  had  chosen  were  propitious  for  these  forms 
of  eloquence,  while  he  was  eminently  fitted  to  excel  in 
other  ways.  He  possessed  a  voice  of  almost  unexam- 
pled perfection.  Eising  with  an  easy  and  melodious 
swell,  it  filled  the  largest  building  and  triumphed  over 
the  wildest  tumult,  while  at  the  same  time  it  conveyed 
every  inflection  of  feeling  with  the  most  delicate  flexi- 
bility. His  action  was  so  easy,  natural,  and  suited  to 
his  subject,  that  it  almost  escaped  the  notice  of  the 
observer.  His  language  was  clear,  nervous,  and  fluent, 
but  often  incorrect,  and  scarcely  ever  polished.  As 
Shell  complained,  '  he  often  threw  out  a  brood  of 
sturdy  young  ideas  upon  the  world  without  a  rag  to 
cover  them.'  What  especially  struck  the  critics  of  his 
oratory  was  its  spontaneity,  its  unfailing  lucidity,  and 
its  versatility.  His  speeches  before  a  law  court,  before 
Parliament,  and  before  a  popular  audience  were  wholly 
different,  and  each  kind  was  admirably  adapted  for  its 
end.  He  neither  aimed  at  nor  cared  for  the  graces  of 
oratory  and  he  could  sometimes  descend  very  low,  but 
no  man  of  his  generation  could  reason  more  powerfully, 
or  state  a  case  more  clearly,  or  sway  the  passions  of  a 
great  multitude  with  such  consummate  skill.     He  used 


FEARS  OF  INSURRECTION  63 

to  say  that  his  most  carefully  prepared  speeches  were 
always  the  least  successful.  He  seldom  aimed  at  orna- 
ment, and  when  he  did  it  was  apt  to  be  tawdry  and 
meretricious;  but  when  he  relied  exclusively  on  the 
feelings  of  the  moment,  he  often  rose  to  a  strain  of 
masculine  eloquence  that  was  all  the  more  forcible  from 
its  being  evidently  unprepared.  *  I  know  of  no  living 
orator,'  said  an  acute  French  critic,'  *  who  communi- 
cates so  thoroughly  to  his  audience  the  idea  of  the  most 
profound  and  absolute  conviction.'  The  listener  fol- 
lowed clearly  the  transparent  workings  of  his  mind — 
could  perceive  him  hewing  his  thoughts  into  rhetoric 
with  a  negligent  but  colossal  grandeur,  with  the  chisel 
not  of  Canova,  but  of  a  Michael  Angelo. 

The  power  of  the  society  he  had  created  and  the 
alarm  it  in  some  quarters  excited  appear  abundantly  in 
the  correspondence  of  the  time.  The  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton wrote  to  Peel  that  if  the  Catholic  Association  was 
not  got  rid  of  Ireland  was  sure  sooner  or  later  to  have 
a  civil  war,  and  that  the  organisation  of  the  disaffected 
was  far  more  powerful  than  in  1798.  Peel,  who  was 
then  Home  Secretary,  and  Goulburn,  who  was  Irish 
Secretary,  both  acknowledged  that  there  were  no  signs 
that  O'Connell  was  meditating  rebellion  or  that  any 
preparations  for  it  were  being  made,  but  the  state  of 
the  country  seemed  to  them  scarcely  less  alarming.  In 
the  words  of  Peel,  ^  a  power  co-ordinate  with  the  Gov- 
ernment was  rising  at  its  side  and  daily  counteracting 
its  views,'  and  Goulburn  declared  that  *  an  indiscreet 
or  wicked  priest  (and  there  are  many  of  both  classes) 
might  to-morrow  send  forth  his  congregation  to  destroy 
the  lives  and  property  of  their  Protestant  neighbours.' 
The  language  of  O'Connell  was  often  extremely  inflam- 

*  Duvergier. 


64         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

matory,  and  seemed  to  go  far  beyond  any  simple  de- 
mand for  reform.  Peel  quotes  one  characteristic  sen- 
tence :  ^  The  English  arrived  in  Ireland  one  fine  morning 
about  six  hundred  years  since,  and  have  done  nothing 
but  disturb  and  devastate  it.'  In  all  parts  of  the  coun- 
try fears  of  immediate  massacres  and  insurrection  were 
expressed  to  the  Government,  and  it  was  stated  that  an 
approaching  war  formed  a  general  topic  of  conversation 
among  the  lower  orders. 

In  the  north  the  Orangemen  were  rapidly  multiply- 
ing and  acquiring  a  fanaticism  which  was  largely  stimu- 
lated by  the  increasing  boldness  and  power  of  the  Catho- 
lic movement.  In  the  beginning  of  the  administration 
of  Lord  Wellesley  fierce  riots  broke  out  in  Dublin  on 
account  of  the  refusal  of  the  Lord  Mayor  to  permit  the 
decoration  of  the  statue  of  William  III.,  and  when  Lord 
Wellesle}^,  who  had  approved  of  that  refusal,  attended 
the  theatre  a  storm  of  disapprobation  broke  out  and  a 
bottle  was  thrown  by  some  unknown  person  at  the 
Viceregal  box.  It  was  a  scandalous  outrage,  but  the 
Government  made  a  great  mistake  in  treating  it  as  a 
deliberate  attempt  at  assassination,  and  in  instituting 
a  prosecution  on  a  capital  charge  against  the  rioters. 
This  charge,  it  is  true,  was  speedily  withdrawn,  and  to 
the  great  indignation  of  Plunket  the  grand  jury  threw 
out  the  bill  as^aiust  most  of  the  rioters. 

Plunket  was  equally  unfortunate  and  equally  inju- 
dicious in  a  prosecution  he  instituted  against  O'Connell 
in  the  beginning  of  1825.  Great  enthusiasm  had  been 
aroused  in  many  quarters  by  the  career  of  Bolivar,  who 
was  then  leading  the  rising  against  the  Spanish  power 
in  South  America.  O'Connell  seems  to  have  shared 
the  feeling,  and  with  his  full  approbation  one  of  his 
sons  went  to  America  to  serve  under  the  insurgent  flag. 
In  a  speech  in  Ireland,  when  dilating  on  the  dangers 


THE  CATHOLIC  QUESTION,  1824^25  65 

of  resisting  the  Catholic  claim,  O'Connell  is  stated  to 
have  said,  '  Oppression  drives  the  wise  man  mad.  It 
has  not  yet  had  that  effect  on  the  Irish  people ;  it  has 
never  driven  them  to  the  extremity  of  desperate  resist- 
ance, and  Heaven  forbid  it  should ;  but  if  such  an  event 
came  to  pass,  may  another  Bolivar  and  the  example  of 
Greece  animate  their  efforts,'  or,  according  to  another 
version,  '  may  another  Bolivar  arise  to  vindicate  their 
rights/  ^  Goulburn  and  Plunket  selected  this  passage 
for  prosecution  as  being  an  incentive  to  armed  rebel- 
lion. According  to  the  best  reports,  O'ConnelFs  lan- 
guage had  been  far  too  carefully  guarded  and  too  hypo- 
thetical to  be  a  proper  subject  of  prosecution,  and  it 
was  somewhat  unfortunate  for  the  prosecutors  that 
before  the  case  could  come  to  trial  the  policy  of  Can- 
ning had  triumphed,  and  the  independence  of  the 
Spanish  colonies  for  which  Bolivar  contended  had  been 
recognised  by  the  English  Government.  The  evidence 
about  the  exact  words  used  by  O'Connell  was  not  satis- 
factory, and  the  Protestant  grand  jury  of  Dublin  threw 
out  the  bill. 

The  question  of  Catholic  Emancipation  was  now 
entering  into  a  very  acute  stage.  George  IV.  wrote  to 
Peel  declaring  that  he  shared  in  full  measure  the  hos- 
tility to  Catholic  Emancipation  '  of  his  revered  and  ex- 
cellent father,'  and  never  could  or  would  deviate  from 
those  sentiments;  and  in  another  letter  he  declared 
that  he  was  so  inexorably  opposed  to  the  very  moderate 
measure  of  granting  letters  of  precedence  to  a  Roman 
Catholic  barrister  that  in  case  the  Cabinet  recom- 
mended it  to  him  he  would  positively  refuse  his  con- 
sent.'    Even  the  anti- Catholic  portion  of  the  Cabinet 


*  Fitzpatrick,  i.  63-64.     Peel's  Correspondence^  i.  354. 

•  Peel  s  Correspondence^  i.  349,  359. 


VOL.  II. 


66        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

was  alarmed  at  these  declarations  and  kept  them  care- 
fully from  the  public.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Cabinet 
was  convinced  that  the  Catholic  Association  must  be 
put  down,  and  not  less  convinced  that  it  could  only  be 
done  by  special  legislation.  A  Bill  was  accordingly 
drawn  up  for  this  purpose,  and  it  included  a  clause 
directed  against  the  processions  of  the  Orange  Society. 
On  the  great  question,  however,  of  the  admission  of  the 
Catholics  into  Parliament,  there  was  a  considerable 
modification  of  opinion  in  the  Cabinet,  largely  due  to 
the  changed  aspects  of  affairs  in  Ireland.  Peel  and 
Eldon  remained  steady  in  their  opposition,  and  Lord 
Liverpool,  contrary  to  a  prevailing  rumour,  was  still 
unshaken;  but  the  dominant  feeling  was  now  in  favour 
of  concession,  accompanied  by  the  two  securities  of  the 
payment  of  the  j^riests  and  the  disfranchisement  of  the 
forty-shilling  freeholders.  The  Catholic  Relief  Bill  of 
this  year  was  put  in  the  hands  of  Sir  Francis  Burdett, 
and  being  supported  by  Canning  and  Plunket,  though 
opposed  by  Peel,  it  passed  its  second  reading  in  the 
Commons  by  a  majority  of  27,  and  its  third  reading  by 
a  majority  of  21.  The  Bill  raising  the  electoral  fran- 
chise in  Ireland  was  read  a  second  time  by  a  majority 
of  38,  and  a  resolution  in  favour  of  endowing  the 
Catholic  priesthood  by  a  majority  of  43.  O'Connell 
believed  that  the  triumph  of  his  cause  was  almost 
achieved  and  would  not  be  delayed  beyond  1825.  It 
was  noticed  that  at  this  time  the  great  preponderance 
of  the  English  Press  was  in  favour  of  the  Catholics,' 
and,  in  spite  of  the  violence  of  the  Orange  party  in  the 
north,  they  were  supported  by  the  most  important  of 
the  Protestant  gentry  of  Ireland.  Accompanied  by 
Shell  and  by  some  other  prominent  Catholics,  O'Con- 

*  Fagan,  i.  335. 


O'CONNELL'S  PRIVATE  LIFE  67 

nell  went  in  the  February  of  1825  to  London  on  a 
deputation  from  the  Catholic  Association  in  order  to 
protest  against  its  suppression.  A  short  sketch  written 
by  Sheil,  and  O'Connell's  oWn  letters  written  to  his 
wife,  give  a  graj^hic  account  of  this  expedition. 

The  better  side  of  O'Connell's  nature  never  appears 
more  clearly  than  in  his  charming,  but  most  unstudied, 
letters  to  his  wife  and  children.  No  one  who  reads 
them  can  fail  to  recognise  in  them  a  deeply  affectionate 
nature,  eagerly  craving  for  sympathy,  disclosing  to 
those  he  loved  with  an  almost  childlike  simplicity  all 
his  moods  and  impulses  of  joy  and  sorrow,  of  triumph 
and  disappointment.  It  is  very  noticeable  how  clearly 
his  strong  religious  feeling  is  revealed  in  these  letters, 
which  were  certainly  not  intended  to  see  the  light. 
Not  many  busy  lawyers  or  politicians  can  have  been  so 
anxious  to  observe,  and  to  oblige  his  fellow-travellers 
to  observe,  strictly  the  Lenten  fast,  even  when  they 
arrived  hungry  at  a  wayside  inn  after  a  long  day's  jour- 
ney, or  so  determined  not  to  travel  on  Sunday  until 
they  had  attended  early  mass.  One  of  the  most  inter- 
esting episodes  of  the  journey  was  a  visit  to  Bishop 
Milner — then  a  very  old  and  feeble  man,  but  a  man 
whom  they  regarded  with  the  deepest  reverence.  Al- 
though the  deputation  failed  to  attain  its  object  of  pre- 
venting the  suppression  of  the  Catholic  Association,  it 
was  far  from  useless.  It  brought  0' Council  into  close 
and  friendly  connection  with  the  leaders  of  the  English 
"Whigs.  He  spoke  with  great  power  at  a  meeting  held 
in  London  in  favour  of  concessions  to  the  Catholics. 
He  attended  several  sittings  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
with  which  he  was  by  no  means  impressed,  and  he  gave 
much  valuable  evidence  on  the  state  of  Ireland  before 
a  Select  Committee  which  was  held  in  this  year. 

This  Committee  collected  the  best  material  we  pos- 


68         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

sess  for  a  full  knowledge  of  the  general  state  of  Ireland 
in  1825;,  and  no  part  of  it  is  more  valuable  than  the 
evidence  of  O'Connell.  It  is  marked  by  great  know- 
ledge, by  great  acuteness,  and  also  by  great  moderation, 
and  seems  to  have  left  a  very  favourable  impression 
upon  those  who  heard  it.  At  this  period  of  his  career 
O'Connell  showed  an  eminently  conciliatory  spirit  and 
a  genuine  anxiety  that  Catholic  Emancipation  should 
be  carried  in  a  spirit  which  would  not  irritate  or  in- 
flame Protestant  opinion  in  Ireland.  A  few  years  be- 
fore he  had  written  to  Lord  Cloncurry:  '  To  my  judg- 
ment, no  emancipation  can  be  of  any  avail  but  such  as 
shall  be  satisfactory  to  all  parties.  It  should  not  par- 
ticipate in  any,  even  in  the  slightest,  degree  of  a  victory 
by  the  Catholics  over  the  Protestants.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  should  come  as  a  kind  concession  from  the 
Protestants,  and  be  received  in  the  spirit  of  affectionate 
gratitude  by  the  Catholics.  It  should,  in  short,  be  pre- 
cisely similar  to  the  relief  granted  in  1778,  to  that  con- 
ceded in  1782,  to  that  bestowed  in  1792,  and  finally  to 
that  of  1793.'  ^  In  his  evidence  before  the  Parliamen- 
tary Inquiry  he  used  very  similar  language.  '  I  would 
beg  leave  to  say  it  would  be  better  to  leave  things  as 
they  are  than  to  have  an  Emancipation  Bill  that  was 
not  in  a  proper  spirit  both  for  the  Catholics  and  Prot- 
estants, for  it  would  be  giving  us  additional  power  and 
leaving  still  a  stimulant  to  those  animosities  that  divide 
the  country,  and  I  think  the  thing  should  remain  as  it 
is,  unless  it  be  done  heartily  and  cordially.'  '  There 
never,'  he  said,  '  was  a  period  when  it  would  be  so  easy 
to  subdue  the  hostile  feelings  between  Catholics  and 
Protestants  or  to  create  a  better  one  than  just  now.  .  .  . 
We  have  brought  the  people  to  a  great  connection  now 


*  Fitzpatrick,  i.  p.  69.    This  letter  was  written  in  1820. 


PAYMENT  OF  THE  PRIESTS  69 

with  the  gentry.  We  have  combined  the  clergy  with  the 
gentry  and  the  people.  .  .  .  There  is  universal  tran- 
quillity at  this  moment,  and  acting  thus  togetherand  the 
disposition  of  the  clergy  of  every  class  and  the  gentry 
being  most  sincerely  to  consolidate  the  interests  of  the 
people  with  that  of  the  Government,  I  am  convinced 
that  at  this  moment  it  can  be  done  with  more  effect 
and  general  satisfaction  than  at  any  time  that  has 
come  within  my  knowledge  up  to  this.  At  any  former 
period  there  would  have  been  something  of  triumph 
and,  perhaps,  of  insolent  victory  on  our  parts.  I  do 
not  think  there  would  be  the  least  at  present. 

On  the  subject  of  the  proposed  securities  he  showed 
himself  very  willing  to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  Govern- 
ment. Of  the  payment  of  the  priests  he  fully  approved. 
It  must  not,  he  said,  precede  emancipation,  for  other- 
wise it  would  appear  as  if  the  priests  were  trafficking 
for  their  own  advantage.  It  must  not  consist  of  any 
transfer  of  tithes,  the  impost  the  Irish  peojDle  most  bit- 
terly abhorred.  Nor  must  it  be  accompanied  by  any 
provision  giving  the  Government  a  power  of  interfering 
with  the  appointment  of  priests  or  with  any  purely 
ecclesiastical  concerns,  though  at  the  same  time  if  at 
any  future  time  any  real  and  substantial  evil  was  found 
to  result  from  the  present  ecclesiastical  situation,  he 
said  that  he  was  quite  sure  that  after  emancipation  the 
Government  would  find  great  facilities  both  at  Rome 
and  in  Ireland  for  making  satisfactory  arrangements. 
But  subject  to  these  conditions  he  fully  approved  of  a 
State  endowment  for  the  priesthood.  '  I  am  sure,'  he 
said,  *  that  if  an  equalisation  of  civil  rights  took  place 
they  would  accept  of  it,  and  that  the  Catholic  gentry 
would  concur  with  them  in  a  desire  that  they  should, 
the  object  being  to  connect  the  Catholic  clergy  and 
laity  of  Ireland  with  the  Government  itself,  to  embody 


70         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION   IN  IRELAND 

them,  as  it  were,  as  a  portion  of  the  State,  and  to  give 
the  Government  what  we  would  desire — a  reasonable 
and  fair  influence  over  the  Catholic  clergy,  so  that  there 
should  not  be  even  an  idea  of  any  danger  of  their  being 
taken  away  to  favour  a  foreign  enemy  or  to  favour  do- 
mestic insurrection.'  '  I  am  thoroughly  convinced  that 
the  object  of  the  Catholic  clergy  and  laity  of  Ireland  is 
sincerely  and  honestly  to  concur  with  the  Government 
in  every  measure  that  shall  increase  the  strength  of  the 
Government  in  Ireland,  so  as  to  consolidate  Ireland 
with  England  completely  in  every  beneficial  respect.' 

On  this  subject  O'Connell  did  not  speak  the  opin- 
ions of  the  bulk  of  the  Catholic  clergy  or  of  the  Catho- 
lic democracy  which  supported  them.  He  soon  con- 
vinced himself  that  popular  feeling  was  not  behind 
him,  and  he  ultimately  avowed  himself  a  true,  though 
reluctant,  convert  to  the  voluntary  principle.  But 
long  after  Catholic  Emancipation  was  carried  his  cor- 
respondence shows  that  he  retained  his  belief  that  a 
measure  at  least  giving  glebes  to  the  Catholic  priest- 
hood would  be  of  great  benefit  to  Ireland.  A  long  suc- 
cession of  the  best  judges  of  Irish  affairs  have  concurred 
in  his  opinion. 

On  the  question  of  the  disfranchisement  of  the  405. 
freeholders  he  was  more  hesitating,  but  the  inconsist- 
ency of  his  attitude  in  1825  with  his  attitude  in  1829 
has  been  exaggerated.  In  1825  he  was  trying  to  carry 
Catholic  Emancipation  by  an  amicable  bargain  with  the 
Government,  and  at  that  time  the  405.  freeholders,  ex- 
cept in  the  towns,  had  shown  themselves  almost  abso- 
lutely destitute  of  political  independence.  They  almost 
invariably  voted  as  their  landlords  told  them,  and  a 
vast  amount  of  corruption  was  connected  with  their 
creation.  O'Connell  frankly  avowed  that  he  did  not 
like  their  disfranchisement.      He  said  that  his  own 


SPEECH  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  YORK  71 

opinions  were  in  favour  of  the  widest  possible  extension 
of  the  suffrage.  He  believed  that  the  Protestant  40s. 
freeholders  would  be  bitterly  discontented  if  their  dis- 
franchisement were  made  a  condition  of  Catholic  Eman- 
cipation, and  he  urged  that  without  emancipation  such 
a  measure  would  have  the  worst  possible  effect  upon  the 
Catholics.  But  if  Catholic  Emancipation  were  carried 
he  thought  the  Catholics  should  acquiesce  in  the  dis- 
franchisement if  the  Government  desired  it,  and  he 
was  of  opinion  that  a  qualification  of  bl.  or  10?.  would 
bring  with  it  a  greater  amount  of  independence  among 
the  electors.  He  did  not,  he  said,  acquiesce  in  the 
abolition  of  all  405.  freeholders.  Those  in  the  towns 
were  often  an  independent  and  intelligent  class;  but 
those  who  held  minute  farms  at  a  rack-rent,  or  who 
were  tenants  in  common,  were  absolutely  dependent 
and  abjectly  wretched,  and  if  landlords  turned  their 
lands  into  10?.  freeholds  it  would  be  a  real  benefit.* 

His  hopes  of  a  speedy  triumph  of  the  Catholic  cause 
were  soon  dashed  to  the  ground,  and  under  circum- 
stances well  calculated  to  exasperate  Irish  opinion  to 
the  utmost.  The  Catholic  Bill,  having  passed  the 
Commons,  came  before  the  Lords,  and  it  there  found 
an  opponent  of  the  most  formidable  kind.  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned  that  in  1821  the  Duke  of  York,  who 
was  heir-presumptive  to  the  throne,  had  declared  in 
that  House  his  unqualified  opposition  to  Plunket's  Bill 
for  emancipating  the  Catholics,  and  had  stated  that 
this  opposition  arose  from  principles  '  which  he  had  cm- 
braced  ever  since  he  had  been  able  to  judge  for  himself, 
and  which  he  hoped  he  should  cherish  to  the  last  day 
of  his  life.'  In  1825  he  made  a  still  more  violent,  and 
indeed  indecent,  speech,  which  at  once  placed  him  at 


*  Fagan,  i.  381,  399. 


72        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  head  of  the  most  fanatical  section  of  the  opponents 
of  emancipation.  Standing  up  in  his  place  to  present 
a  petition  against  the  Catholic  Bill,  he  argued  in  the 
most  unqualified  terms  against  any  further  concessions 
to  the  Catholics.  He  said  that  he  felt  the  subject  more 
forcibly  when  he  remembered  that  to  the  agitation  of 
the  Catholic  question  must  be  ascribed  the  illness  which 
clouded  the  last  days  of  his  illustrious  and  beloved 
father,  and  he  concluded  by  declaring  that  the  princi- 
ples of  his  father  were  those  which  he  had  imbibed 
from  his  earliest  youth,  that  he  would  adhere  to  them 
and  maintain  them  and  act  upon  them  to  the  latest 
moment  of  his  existence,  whatever  might  be  his  situa- 
tion in  life — so  help  him  God.^ 

Few  speeches  have  had  such  a  deep  and  lasting  effect. 
The  House  of  Lords,  largely  under  its  influence,  threw 
out  the  Bill  by  a  majority  of  48.  The  exultation  of  the 
extreme  anti-Catholic  party  in  finding  the  heir  to  the 
throne  their  avowed  leader  was  unbounded.  His  speech 
was  printed  in  letters  of  gold  and  placarded  on  the 
walls  of  London.  His  portrait  hung  in  the  houses  of 
the  most  vehement  Protestants,  and  his  health  became 
a  standing  toast,  coupled  with  that  of  the  glorious, 
pious  and  immortal  memory.  '  Never, '  wrote  Lord 
Eldon,  ^  was  anything  like  the  sensation  the  Duke  of 
York's  speech  has  made; '  '  it  has  had  such  an  opera- 
tion upon  all  ranks  of  men,  that  it  will  create  insuper- 
able difficulties  to  passing  the  intended  measure  another 
year.'  '  It  has  placed  him  on  a  pinnacle  of  popularity.^ 
It  is  impossible  to  look  back  on  all  this  without  feel- 
ing the  utter  madness  of  the  course  which  was  being 
pursued.     Sooner  or  later  Catholic  Emancipation  must 


'  Walpole,  History  of  England,  ii.  203,  256.      Twiss's  Life  of 
Eldon,  ii.  542-547. 


DISSOLUTION  OF  PARLIAMENT  73 

have  come,  but  what  kind  of  element  was  it  likely  to 
bring  into  the  Constitution  ?  The  loyalty  of  the  Catho- 
lics was  already  a  very  dubious  and  hesitating  senti- 
ment, but  there  was  still  time  to  conciliate  their  priest- 
hood. The  bishops  were  fully  open  to  negotiation,  and 
0' Council  at  least  did  his  best  to  maintain  an  attach- 
ment to  the  connection  and  the  throne.  The  farewell 
address  of  the  Catholic  Association  when  it  was  sup- 
pressed in  1825  urged  upon  their  co-religionists  the 
duty  of  '  attachment  to  the  British  Constitution  and 
unqualified  loyalty  to  the  King. '  But  how  could  it  be 
expected  that  this  loyalty  would  last  ?  George  III.  by 
his  individual  action  had  prevented  the  triumph  of  the 
Liberal  policy  of  Pitt  by  which  alone  the  Union  could 
have  been  made  a  success,  and  by  his  inflexible  will 
had  thrown  back  the  Catholic  question  for  many  years. 
George  IV.,  in  spite  of  the  clear  pledges  which  he  had 
given  to  the  Catholics,  had  adopted  the  same  policy 
with  equal  vehemence  and  almost  equal  effect,  though 
certainly  not  with  equal  moral  authority.  And  now 
the  heir  to  the  throne  had  come  forward  to  avow  his 
determination  of  continuing  the  tradition  and  making 
himself  the  leader  of  the  most  extreme  party  opposed 
to  the  emancipation  of  his  Irish  Catholic  subjects.  We 
may  lament,  but  we  can  hardly  wonder,  that  when  the 
Duke  of  York  was  stricken  down  with  a  mortal  illness 
in  the  succeeding  year,  the  event  was  received  in  Ireland 
with  some  measure  of  indecent  exultation. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  wished  to  dissolve  Parlia- 
ment during  the  excitement  produced  by  the  Duke  of 
York's  speech,  but  his  counsel  was  not  followed.  In 
1826,  however,  the  dissolution  took  place,  and  it  turned 
largely  in  England  on  the  No-Popery  cry;  and  this  cry 
had  a  great  influence  over  the  elections.  In  Ireland 
O'Connell  now  threw  aside  the  scabbard,  and  flung  him- 


74         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

self  with  tremendous  power  into  the  fray.  The  sup- 
pression of  the  Catholic  Association,  on  which  the  Gov- 
ernment relied,  proved  absolutely  ineflBcacious.  The 
country  was  thoroughly  organised,  and  O'Connell  knew 
that  he  had  the  people  behind  him.  With  the  dexter- 
ity of  a  skilful  lawyer,  he  soon  reconstructed  the  Asso- 
ciation under  another  name  and  in  a  form  which  was 
fully  adequate  to  his  requirements. 

The  old  Catholic  Association  had  sat  for  several 
months  at  a  time,  ostensibly  for  the  purpose  of  petition- 
ing, and  had  assumed  much  of  the  character  of  a  Par- 
liament discussing  Catholic  grievances.  Goulburn's 
Act,  suppressing  it,  limited  meetings  for  the  purposes 
of  petitioning  to  fourteen  days;  and  by  suppressing  the 
Association  made  illegal  the  rent  which  was  paid  to  it. 
O'Connell  at  once  set  up  a  new  association,  which  was 
ostensibly  for  purposes  of  education  and  charity,  *  and 
for  all  purposes  not  prohibited  by  law,'  and  which 
therefore  had  a  right  to  receive  contributions,  and,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  it  received  the  old  rent.  Some  paid 
their  rent  '  for  the  relief  of  the  40^.  freeholders;  ' 
O'Connell  *  for  all  purposes  allowable  by  law.'  Catho- 
lic Emancipation  was  outside  the  avowed  objects  of  the 
new  body,  but  every  week  a  separate  meeting  was  called 
which  professed  to  be  distinct  from  it,  and  was  called 
*  a  fourteen  days'  meeting,  held  pursuant  of  Act  of 
Parliament.'  The  members  of  the  Association  attended 
these  fourteen  days'  meetings,  and  the  requisitions  sum- 
moning them  were  signed  at  meetings  of  the  Associa- 
tion. The  organisation  for  collecting  rent,  supported 
in  almost  every  parish  by  the  local  priest,  assumed 
gigantic  proportions,  and  '  Church  wardens,'  as  they 
were  termed,  were  appointed  in  every  parish  for  the 
purpose  of  collecting  it.  At  the  same  time  vast  aggre- 
gate meetings  were  held  all  over  Ireland^  and  the  elo- 


REVOLT  OF  THE  PEASANTRY  75 

quence  of  O'Connell  and  Shell,  and  of  numerous  minor 
delegates  of  the  Association,  lashed  the  people  into  a 
frenzy  of  excitement. 

The  great  feature  of  the  election  of  1826  was  the  re- 
volt of  the  Catholic  405.  freeholders  against  their  land- 
lords. Hitherto  in  Ireland,  and  also,  it  must  be  said, 
in  Great  Britain,  it  was  received  as  an  almost  unques- 
tioned axiom  of  agricultural  ethics  that  the  tenant 
must  follow  in  all  political  matters  the  lead  of  his 
landlord.  Ideas  have  on  such  subjects  so  profoundly 
changed  that  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  how  com- 
pletely this  notion  had  been  accepted  by  all  classes. 
There  were  cases  in  which  such  a  condition  was  inserted 
in  leases.  More  commonly  no  such  measure  was  deemed 
necessary,  for  no  resistance  was  even  contemplated. 
All  favours  granted  by  a  landlord  to  his  tenant,  all  re- 
missions or  delays  of  rent,  were  understood  to  be  con- 
ditional on  this  relation,  and  in  the  popular  conception 
the  duty  of  a  tenant  to  vote  with  his  landlord  was  like 
that  of  the  Scotch  clansman  to  follow  his  chief  in  bat- 
tle. Even  in  counties  convulsed  by  Whiteboy  disturb- 
ances this  notion  was  unbroken,  nor,  indeed,  does  it 
appear  to  have  placed  any  real  strain  on  the  conscience 
of  the  tenants.  There  were  certain  subjects  in  which 
the  Catholic  cottiers  were  keenly  interested.  The 
agrarian  question  involved  in  the  Whiteboy  movement, 
the  attacks  upon  tithes,  the  war  against  evictions,  and 
the  regulation  of  priests'  dues  were  genuinely  popular 
questions,  and  there  ran  through  the  Irish  nature  a 
deep  vein  of  fanaticism  which  might,  as  in  1641  and 
1798,  become  very  formidable;  but  questions  of  the 
suffrage,  of  religious  disqualifications,  of  the  balance 
or  disposition  of  political  power,  of  the  scope  and  nature 
of  the  Constitution,  were  almost  wholly  outside  the 
ideas  of  the  Catholic  peasant.     Up  to  the  period  of 


76         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

O'Connell  the  struggle  for  Catholic  Emancipation  had 
been  essentially  a  middle-class  movement.  A  prosper- 
ous and  intelligent  Catholic  commercial  class  had  arisen 
in  the  great  towns,  and  they  found  their  leaders  in  the 
Catholic  aristocracy  and  landed  gentry,  and  were  closely 
allied  with  Protestant  Liberals  of  the  school  of  Grattan. 
It  was  the  great  work  of  O'Connell  to  have  changed  the 
conditions  by  bringing  the  priesthood  actively  into  the 
fray,  and  by  their  instrumentality  awakening  the  great 
masses  of  the  Catholic  peasantry  from  their  political 
sleep.  The  prediction  of  Parsons  that  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment, in  bestowing  the  franchise  on  the  vast  mass  of 
the  Catholic  peasantry,  were  taking  a  measure  which, 
though  it  might  have  no  very  visible  effect  in  the  im- 
mediate f  iitare,  would  ultimately  lead  to  a  total  revolu- 
tion of  power,  and  probably  of  property,  was  now  com- 
ing true.  Two  great  electoral  contests  were  selected  as 
the  battlefield.  In  AYaterford  the  Beresford  influence 
had  long  been  supreme,  while  in  Louth,  Leslie  Foster, 
one  of  the  most  intimate  friends  of  Peel,  was  the  candi- 
date; and  these  two  seats  the  Catholic  Association  now 
resolved  to  attack. 

The  attemj)t  was  strongly  resented.  Landlord  in- 
fluence in  the  shape  of  threats  and  also  in  the  shape  of 
evictions  was  freely  resorted  to,  while  a  fierce  Orange 
fanaticism  in  the  north  w^as  aroused  to  the  utmost  by 
the  appearance  of  the  priesthood  on  the  arena.  But 
a  passionate  enthusiasm  was  now  kindled  among  the 
Catholics  which  overbore  every  obstacle.  The  letters 
of  Leslie  Foster,  of  Goulburn  the  Chief  Secretary,  and 
of  Peel,  who  now  presided  over  the  Home  Office,  give 
a  vivid  and  authentic  picture  of  the  intensity  of  the 
struggle.  In  the  words  of  Shell,  it  was  a  choice  be- 
tween the  distress  warrant  and  the  cross.  In  the 
chapels  the  priests  were  now  preaching  that  the  eternal 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  PRIESTS  77 

salvation  of  the  voter  was  at  stake;  that  every  tenant 
who  lost  his  farm  on  account  of  his  vote  had  earned 
the  crown  of  martyrdom,  while  hell  was  the  inevitable 
doom  of  all  who  at  this  great  crisis  proved  false  to  their 
Church. 

Nor  was  it  merely  spiritual  threats  that  were  em- 
ployed. Many  Protestants,  Leslie  Foster  declares,  were 
forced  to  vote  against  him  by  threats  of  assassination  or 
of  having  their  homes  burnt.  Fierce  mobs  waylaid  and 
beat  voters  who  were  hostile  to  O'Connell,  and  the  form 
of  intimidation  so  well  known  in  our  day  under  the 
name  of  boycotting  was  in  full  force.  '  In  several 
towns,'  wrote  Goulburn,  '  no  Eoman  Catholic  will  now 
deal  with  a  Protestant  shopkeeper  in  consequence  of 
the  priests'  interdiction.'  'It  is  impossible  to  detail 
in  a  letter  the  various  modes  in  which  the  Eoman 
Catholic  priesthood  now  interfere  in  every  transaction 
of  every  description,  how  they  rule  the  mob,  the  gentry 
and  the  magistracy;  how  they  impede  the  administra- 
tion of  justice.'  '  They  exercise  on  all  matters  a  do- 
minion perfectly  uncontrolled  and  uncontrollable.  In 
many  parts  of  the  country  their  sermons  are  purely 
political,  and  the  altars  in  several  chapels  are  the  rostra 
from  which  they  declaim  on  the  subject  of  Roman 
Catholic  grievances,  exhort  to  the  collection  of  rent  or 
denounce  their  Protestant  neighbours  in  a  mode  per- 
fectly intelligible  and  effective,  but  not  within  the 
grasp  of  the  law.'  '  O'Connell  is  complete  master  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  clergy;  the  clergy  are  complete  | 
masters  of  the  people,  and  upon  him  and  them  it  de- 
joends  whether  the  country  shall  or  shall  not  be  quiet 
during  the  winter.'  There  were  20,000  soldiers  at  this 
time  stationed  in  Ireland,  but  Goulburn  begged  the 
Government  not  to  forget  that  a  great  proportion  of 
these  were  Catholics,  and  that  whatever  disturbance 


78        LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

takes  place  in  Ireland  would  at  once  assume  a  religious 
character. 

The  predictions  of  the  best  judges  were  full  of 
gloom.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  wrote  that  war  or 
peace  in  Ireland  de^^ended  upon  a  few  leaders  of  the 
Catholic  Association,  *  possibly  upon  O'Connell  alone 
by  the  medium  of  the  priests.'  Peel  saw  a  darker  cloud 
than  ever  impending  over  Ireland  in  the  dissolution  of 
*  one  of  the  remaining  bonds  of  society,  the  friendly 
connection  between  landlord  and  tenant/  and  he  be- 
lieved that  in  no  previous  period  did  party  animosity, 
and  especially  the  animosity  of  creeds,  run  higher  than 
at  present.  Leslie  Foster,  who  was  in  the  centre  of  the 
storm,  predicted  that  if  Catholic  Emancipation  were 
now  carried,  the  priests  would  dominate  over  every 
Catholic  constituency;  that  at  least  sixty  Catholic  mem- 
bers would  be  returned,  and  those  of  the  most  violent 
type,  and  that  O'Connell  might  sit  for  any  southern 
county  he  chose.  '  Their  presence  in  the  House  of 
Commons  would  be  the  least  part  of  the  mischief.  A 
helium  servile  would  ensue  all  over  Ireland.'  *  The 
landlords,' he  wrote,  *  are  exasperated  to  the  utmost, 
^the  priests  swaggering  in  their  triumph,  the  tenantry 
^  sullen  and  insolent.  Men  who,  a  month  ago,  were  all 
I  civility  and  submission  now  hardly  suppress  their  curses 
j  when  a  gentleman  passes  by;  the  text  of  every  village 
;  orator  is :  *'  Boys,  you  have  put  down  three  Lords — stick 
^  to  your  priests  and  you  will  carry  all  before  you."  .  .  . 
The  landlords  will  no  doubt  be  driven  to  refuse  free- 
hold leases  to  Roman  Catholics,  and  to  encourage  by 
all  artificial  means  a  Protestant  population.  But  this 
is  a  distant  prospect,  and  in  the  meantime  the  power  of 
these  priests  is  become  so  tremendous  and  their  fury  in 
the  exercise  of  it  so  great,  that  I  begin  to  fear  a  crisis 
of  some  kind  or  other  is  not  far  distant.' 


RESULTS  OF  THE  GENERAL  ELECTION  79 

The  result  was  a  substantial,  though  not  a  complete, 
triumph  of  O'Connell,  Great  numbers  of  the  Catholic 
405.  freeholders  compromised  the  question  by  giving 
one  of  their  two  votes  to  the  candidate  of  the  landlord 
and  the  other  to  the  candidate  of  the  priest.  In  very 
many  cases  they  threw  their  whole  influence  into  the 
scale  of  O'Connell.  In  several  counties  the  force  of 
the  new  movement  was  felt,  and  in  Waterford,  where 
the  Beresfords  had  hitherto  been  supreme.  Lord  George 
Beresford  found  himself  so  completely  deserted  by  his 
people  that  he  did  not  go  to  the  poll.  In  the  county 
of  Louth  Leslie  Foster  retained  his  seat,  but  Dawson, 
the  candidate  of  O'Connell,  headed  the  poll  by  a  large 
majority.  The  gentry  of  the  county  had  been  almost 
unanimous  in  favour  of  Foster  and  in  opposition  to 
Dawson. 

This  general  election  in  Ireland  virtually  decided 
the  fate  of  the  Catholic  question.  It  showed  that  a  new 
power  had  arisen  which  was  likely  in  all  future  strug- 
gles to  be  irresistible.  Goulburn  acutely  observed  that, 
although  the  priesthood  had  originally  been  callexLinto 
action  by  the.  Catkoiic  Association,  their  power  was  en- 
tirely independent  of  it,  that  they  now  felt  their  strength 
and  were  determined  to  exert  it,  and  that  their  disci- 
l-)line  in  action,  their  unity  of  aim,  and  their  immense 
power  over  their  people  had  made  them  by  far  the 
strongest  power  in  Ireland.  O'Connell,  he  said,  is 
their  complete  master,  and  *  upon  him  and  them  it  de- 
pends whether  the  country  shall  or  shall  not  be  quiet 
during  the  winter.' ' 

O'Connell,  however,  though  determined  to  use  to 
the  utmost  the  great  organisation  he  had  created,  had 
no  desire  either  to  lead  a  rebellion  or  to  stimulate  any 


'  Peel's  Correspondence,  i.  409-430. 


80     LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

form  of  crime.  It  is  characteristic  of  him  that  in  this 
very  year  he  wrote  to  Phinket  warning  him  that  he  had 
received  information  that  the  Ribbon  Men  were  secretly 
arming  over  a  great  part  of  Ireland,  that  the  organisa- 
tions were  taking  a  new  and  more  military  form,  that 
rumours  were  spreading  of  Orangemen  arming  against 
the  Catholics  and  that  the  Catholics  were  arming  with 
a  view  to  self-defence.  Rumours  of  this  kind  had  been 
prominent  among  the  influences  that  impelled  the 
Catholics  in  the  rebellion  of  1798,  and  O'Connell  viewed 
them  with  genuine  alarm.  He  implored  Plunket  not 
to  neglect  them,  and  suggested  that  an  increase  of  the 
number  of  the  King's  troops  in  Ireland  was  very  de- 
sirable. He  also  boasted,  and  there  appears  to  have 
been  good  ground  for  his  boast,  that  the  fierce  fever  of 
political  agitation  which  he  had  created  had  not  only 
not  increased  agrarian  crime,  but  had  actually  been  ac- 
companied by  its  diminution.  As  the  Government 
themselves  clearly  saw,  it  was  both  his  interest  and  his 
desire,  while  keeping  the  country  in  a  state  of  agita- 
tion, at  the  same  time  to  prevent  any  outburst  of  riot 
that  could  become  the  pretext  of  military  intervention, 
and  so  far  he  had  i^erfectly  succeeded  in  his  attempt. 

The  year  1827  witnessed  several  events  which  mate- 
rially modified  the  political  prospect.  It  opened  with 
the  death  of  the  Duke  of  York,  and  in  February  Lord 
Liverpool  was  stricken  down  with  palsy,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment was  thus  deprived  of  its  head.  The  system  of 
Cabinets  divided  on  the  Catholic  question  now  became 
untenable,  and  the  accession  of  Canning  to  the  chief 
place  in  the  Government  was  immediately  followed  by 
the  resignation  of  Peel,  Eldon,  and  Wellington,  the 
three  strongest  opponents  of  the  Catholic  claims,  as 
well  as  of  some  less  important  peers.  The  Duke  of 
Wellington,  not  content  with  relinquishing  his  seat  in 


PEEL  AND  THE  CATHOLIC  QUESTION  81 

the  Cabinet,  even  threw  up  the  post  of  Commander-in- 
Chief,  which  he  had  only  just  accepted  on  the  death  of 
the  Duke  of  York.  Peel,  in  the  clearest  and  most  em- 
phatic manner,  placed  his  resignation  solely  on  the 
ground  of  the  Catholic  question.  The  accession  to  the 
first  place  of  an  advocate  of  concession  must,  he  said, 
necessarily  assist  it;  and,  as  he  wrote  to  his  brother  in 
April,  1827,  *  to  the  carrying  of  that  question,  to  the 
preparation  for  its  being  carried,  I  never  can  be  a  party. ' 
He  dwelt  upon  the  fact  that  during  the  eleven  years 
with  which  he  had  been  connected  with  the  Government 
of  Lord  Liverpool  he  had  either  as  Chief  Secretary  for 
Ireland  or  as  Home  minister  been  in  immediate  contact 
with  Irish  affairs,  and  specially  responsible  for  their 
administration;  that  during  the  whole  of  that  period 
he  had  taken  an  active  and  prominent  part  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  Catholic  claims;  that  he  had  of  late  been 
the  only  minister  of  the  Crown  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons who  was  opposed  to  them.*  The  ministry  of  Can- 
ning, deprived  of  this  support  and  relying  largely  on 
the  precarious  assistance  of  the  Whigs,  must  necessarily 
have  been  a  weak  one,  and  any  hopes  the  Catholics 
might  have  entertained  from  his  accession  to  power  were 
soon  dashed  to  the  ground.  Four  months  after  he  had 
accepted  the  office  of  Prime  Minister  Canning  was  in 
his  grave,  and  Wellington,  with  Peel  as  his  chief  sup- 
porter, was  the  head  of  the  Government. 

O'Connell  was  alternately  discouraged  and  exasper- 
ated by  the  course  of  events.  He  urged  that  a  petition 
for  the  repeal  of  the  Union  should  be  drawn  up,  and 
he  expressed  his  strong  hope  that  it  would  find  some 
Protestant  support.  *  The  assistance  of  Protestants,' 
he  wrote  about  this  time,  '  generates  so  much  good  feel- 


*  Peel's  Correspondence,  i.  426,  485,  486. 

VOL.  II.  ^6 


82        LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

ing  and  such  a  national  communion  of  sentiment  that 
I  deem  it  more  valuable  than  emancipation  itself.'  A 
strenuous  Orangeman,  writing  to  the  Government,  ac- 
knowledged that,  unless  the  Government  took  an  un- 
hesitatingly Protestant  line,  the  majority  of  the  Irish 
Protestants  were  in  favour  of  compromise  with  the 
Catholic  party/  The  House  of  Commons  was  very 
evenly  divided.  In  1825  the  Catholic  question  was  car- 
ried in  it  by  a  majority  of  21.  In  1827  it  was  defeated 
there  by  a  majority  of  4.  In  1828  it  was  again  carried 
by  a  majority  of  6.  Peel  noticed  that  among  the  Irish 
members  61  were  in  favour  of  Catholic  Emancipation 
and  only  32  against.  Of  the  64  Irish  county  members, 
61  voted,  and  of  these  45  were  in  favour  of  the  Catho- 
lics and  only  16  against  them.'  The  preponderance  of 
the  English  press  and  a  large  proportion  of  the  more 
important  counties  and  of  the  larger  English  towns 
were  in  favour  of  the  policy  of  Canning. 

In  1828  the  Whigs,  for  the  first  time  after  many 
years,  won  a  great  triumph  in  the  abolition  of  the  Sac- 
ramental test  which  was  intended  to  exclude  Dissenters 
from  offices  under  the  Crown.  The  motion  was  intro- 
duced by  Lord  J.  Eussell  and  carried  by  a  majority  of 
44,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  newly  appointed 
Government.  When  the  question  was  raised,  O'Con- 
nell  at  once  organised  a  great  Catholic  petition  in 
favour  of  it.  The  step  was  both  magnanimous  and 
politic,  for  the  Dissenters  were  perhaps  more  generally 
hostile  than  the  Anglicans  to  the  Catholic  cause.  It 
was  part  of  the  policy  which  O'Connell  was  always  most 
reluctant  to  abandon,  of  uniting  the  great  body  of  the 
Irish  Protestants  with  the  Catholics  both  on  the  ques- 


^  PeeFs  Correspondence,  i.  426.    Fitzpatrick's  Correspondence  of 
O'Connell,  i.  139,  165.  ""  PeeFs  Memoirs,  i.  289. 


THE  WELLINGTON  MINISTRY  83 

tion  of  emancipation  and  on  the  question  of  repeal.  It 
was  a  policy  which  even  led  him  to  make  ardent  over- 
tures to  the  Orangemen,  and  on  one  occasion  at  a  pub- 
lic banquet  to  drink  the  health  of  the  glorious,  pious, 
and  immortal  memory. 

It  would,  however,  be  unjust  to  attribute  his  con- 
duct merely  to  such  motives.  However  inconsistent  he 
might  be  on  other  questions,  he  was  uniformly  in  favour 
of  religious  liberty  and  tolerance  in  all  its  forms.  He 
was  never  one  of  those  who  claimed  it  for  themselves 
and  sought  to  deny  it  to  other  creeds  or  in  other  lands. 
We  shall  hereafter  see  more  of  the  nature  of  his  reli- 
gious policy,  which  forms  a  very  important  element  in 
his  career. 

He  at  the  same  time  identified  himself  with  an  ex- 
treme form  of  Eadical  democracy :  universal  suffrage, 
vote  by  ballot,  the  transformation  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  annual,  or  at  least  biennial,  Parliaments. 

Meanwhile  the  great  Catholic  organisation  was 
steadily  pushed  on,  and  the  passions  of  the  people  kept 
at  the  highest  temperature. 

On  the  accession  of  the  Wellington  Ministry  to 
power,  the  Catholic  Association  passed  a  resolution  to 
the  effect  that  they  would  oppose  with  their  whole  en- 
ergy any  Irish  member  who  consented  to  accept  office 
under  it.  When  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts  were 
repealed.  Lord  John  Russell  advised  the  withdrawal  of 
this  resolution,  and  O'Connell,  who,  at  that  time, 
usually  acted  as  moderator,  was  inclined  to  comply. 
Fortunately,  however,  his  opinion  was  overruled.  An 
opportunity  for  carrying  the  resolution  into  effect  soon 
occurred.  Fitzgerald,  the  member  for  Clare,  accepted 
the  office  of  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  was 
consequently  obliged  to  go  to  his  constituents  for  re- 
election.    An  attempt  was  made  to  induce  a  Major 


84        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Macnamara  to  oppose  him,  but  it  failed  at  the  last  mo- 
ment, and  then  O'Oonnell  adopted  the  bold  resolution 
of  standing  himself.  The  excitement  at  this  announce- 
ment rose  at  once  to  fever  height.  It  extended  over 
every  part  of  Ireland,  and  penetrated  every  class  of 
society.  The  whole  mass  of  the  Roman  Catholics  pre- 
pared to  support  him,  and  the  vast  system  of  organisa- 
tion which  he  had  framed  acted  effectually  in  every 
direction.  He  went  down  to  the  field  of  battle,  accom- 
panied by  Shell,  by  the  well-known  controversialist 
Father  Maguire,  and  by  Steele  and  0 'Gorman  Mahon, 
two  very  ardent  but  eccentric  repealers,  who  proposed 
and  seconded  him.  Steele  began  operations  by  offering 
to  fight  a  duel  with  any  landlord  who  w^as  aggrieved  at 
the  interference  with  his  tenants  while  O'Connell,  Shell, 
and  Father  Maguire  flew  over  the  country,  haranguing 
the  people.  The  priests  at  the  same  time  addressed 
their  parishioners  with  impassioned  zeal  from  almost 
every  altar;  they  called  on  them,  as  they  valued  their 
immortal  souls,  as  they  would  avoid  the  doom  of  the 
apostate  and  the  renegade,  to  stand  firm  to  the  banner 
of  their  faith.  Robed  in  the  sacred  vestments,  and 
bearing  aloft  the  image  of  Christ,  they  passed  from 
rank  to  rank,  stimulating  the  apathetic,  encouraging 
the  faint-hearted,  and  imprecating  curses  on  the  rec- 
reant. They  breathed  the  martyr  spirit  into  their  peo- 
ple, and  persuaded  them  that  their  cause  was  as  sacred 
as  that  of  the  early  Christians.  They  opposed  the  spell 
of  religion  to  the  spell  of  feudalism — the  traditions  of 
the  chapel  to  the  traditions  of  the  hall. 

The  landlords,  on  the  other  hand,  were  equally  reso- 
lute. They  were  indignant  at  a  body  of  men  who  had  no 
connection  with  the  county  presuming  to  dictate  to  their 
tenants.  They  protested  vehemently  against  the  intro- 
duction of  spiritual  influence  into  a  political  election. 


THE  CLARE  ELECTION  85 

and  against  the  ingratitude  manifested  towards  a  tried 
and  upright  member.  Fitzgerald  had  always  been  a 
supporter  of  the  Catholic  cause.  He  was  an  accom- 
plished speaker,  a  man  of  unquestioned  integrity,  and 
of  fascinating  and  polished  manners.  His  father — who 
was  at  this  time  lying  on  his  death-bed — had  been  one 
of  those  members  of  the  Irish  Parliament  who  had  re- 
sisted all  the  offers  and  all  the  persuasions  of  the  min- 
istry, and  had  recorded  their  votes  against  the  Union. 
The  landlords  were  to  a  man  in  his  favour.  Sir  Edward 
O'Brien,  the  father  of  Smith  O'Brien,  and  the  leading 
landlord,  proposed  him,  and  almost  all  the  men  of 
weight  and  reputation  in  the  county  surrounded  him 
on  the  hustings.  Nor  did  he  prove  unworthy  of  the 
contest.  His  speech  was  a  model  of  good  taste,  of 
popular  reasoning,  and  of  touching  appeal.  He  re- 
counted his  services,  and  the  services  of  his  father; 
and,  as  he  touched  with  delicate  pathos  on  this  latter 
subject,  his  voice  faltered  and  his  countenance  betrayed 
so  genuine  an  emotion  that  a  kindred  feeling  passed 
through  all  his  hearers,  and  he  closed  his  speech  amidst 
almost  unanimous  applause.  The  effect  was,  however, 
soon  counteracted  by  O'Oonnell,  who  exerted  himself 
to  the  utmost  on  the  occasion,  and  withheld  no  invec- 
tive and  no  sarcasm  that  could  subserve  his  cause.  After 
two  or  three  days'  i^olling  the  victory  was  decided,  and 
Fitzgerald  withdrew  from  the  contest. 

Ireland  was  now  on  the  very  verge  of  revolution. 
The  vast  majority  of  the  people  had  been  organised  like 
a  regular  army,  and  taught  to  act  with  the  most  perfect 
unanimity.  Adopting  a  suggestion  of  Shell,  they  were 
accustomed  to  assemble  in  every  part  of  the  country  on 
the  same  day,  and  scarcely  an  adult  Catholic  abstained 
from  the  movement.  In  1828  it  was  computed  that  in 
a  single  day  two  thousand  meetings  were  held.     In  the 


86         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

same  year  Lord  Anglesey  had  warned  Sir  Kobert  Peel 
that  the  priests  were  working  most  effectually  on  the 
Catholics  of  the  army,  that  it  was  reported  that  many 
of  these  were  ill-disposed,  and  that  it  was  important  to 
remove  the  depots  of  recruits  and  supply  their  place  by 
English  or  Scotch  men.  The  contagion  of  the  move- 
ment had  thoroughly  infected  the  whole  population. 
The  influence  of  the  landed  aristocracy  and  property 
OQ  the  electorate  seemed  everywhere  giving  way.  If 
concession  had  not  been  made,  almost  every  Catholic 
county  would  have  followed  the  example  of  Clare;  and 
the  Ministers,  feeling  further  resistance  to  be  hopeless, 
brought  in  the  Emancipation  Bill,  confessedly  because 
to  withhold  it  might  kindle  a  rebellion  that  would  ex- 
tend over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  and  would 
certainly  make  the  administration  of  justice  almost  im- 
possible in  cases  in  which  political  or  religious  consider- 
ations were  involved. 

It  was  thus  that  this  great  victory  was  won  by  the 
genius  of  a  single  man,  who  had  entered  on  the  contest 
without  any  advantage  of  rank,  or  wealth,  or  influence, 
who  had  maintained  it  from  no  prouder  eminence  than 
the  platform  of  the  demagogue,  and  who  terminated  it 
without  the  effusion  of  a  single  drop  of  blood.  The 
King  was  so  bitterly  hostile  that  almost  at  the  last  mo- 
ment he  refused  his  consent,  and  only  yielded  when  he 
found  it  impossible  to  construct  a  ministry  to  carry  out 
his  views.  The  House  of  Lords  had  for  many  years 
been  hostile  to  the  Catholic  claims,  and  there  is  little 
doubt  that  the  majority  of  the  people  in  Great  Britain 
agreed  with  it.  Toryism,  which  had  once  had  some 
leaning  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  was  now  deeply  imbued 
with  the  No  Popery  spirit.  The  Evangelical  movement 
had  intensified  it,  evoking  much  of  the  old  passion  of 
Puritanism.     The  pulpits  of  England  resounded  with 


O'CONNELL'S  TRIUMPH  87 

denunciations.  The  Dissenters  appear  to  have  been 
generally  hostile,  and  even  after  the  Clare  election  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the  Bishops  of  London 
and  Durham,  speaking  as  the  representatives  of  the 
Established  Church,  declared  their  implacable  oppo- 
sition to  the  removal  of  Catholic  disabilities. 

Over  all  these  obstacles  O'Connell  triumphed.  The 
most  eminent  advocates  of  emancipation  had  fallen 
away  from  and  disavowed  him.  He  had  devised  the 
organisation  that  gave  such  weight  to  Irish  opinion; 
created  the  enthusiasm  that  inspired  it;  applied  to 
political  affairs  the  priestly  influence  that  consecrated 
it.  With  the  exception  of  Sheil  no  man  of  command- 
ing talent  shared  his  labours,  and  Sheil  was  conspicu- 
ous only  as  a  rhetorician.  He  gained  this  victory  not 
by  stimulating  the  courage  or  increasing  the  number 
of  the  advocates  of  the  measure  in  Parliament,  but  by 
creating  another  system  of  government  in  Trelfind, 
which  overawed  alI-his._QppQneats^  He  gained  it  at  a 
time  when  his  bitterest  enemies  held  the  reins  of  power, 
and  when  they  were  guided  by  the  most  successful 
statesman  of  his  generation,  and  by  one  of  the  most 
stubborn  wills  that  ever  directed  the  affairs  of  the  na- 
tion. If  he  had  never  arisen,  emancipation  would 
doubtless  have  been  at  length  conceded,  but  it  would 
have  been  conceded  as  a  boon,  and  it  would  have  been 
almost  certainly  accompanied  and  qualified  by  the  veto. 
It  was  the  boast  of  O'Connell  that  his  Church  entered 
into  the  constitution  triumphant  and  unshackled — an 
independent  and  most  formidable  power  that  could  vis- 
ibly affect  the  policy  of  the  Empire. 

It  was  a  great  personal  triumph,  but  certainly  the 
Kelief  Bill  was  not  won  in  the  way  which  was  most 
beneficial  to  the  Empire,  or  indeed  to  Ireland.  Of  all 
possible   measures,    Catholic   Emancipation  might,  if 


88         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

judiciously  carried,  have  been  most  efficacious  in  allay- 
ing agitation  and  making  Ireland  permanently  loyal. 
Had  it  been  carried  in  1795 — as  it  would  have  been  if 
Pitt  had  not  recalled  Lord  Fitzwilliam — the  country 
might  possibly  have  been  spared  the  rebellion  of  1798, 
and  all  classes  might  have  rallied  cordially  round  the 
Irish  Parliament.  Had  it  been  carried  at,  or  soon  after, 
the  Union — as  it  would  have  been  if  Pitt  had  dealt  with 
it  in  a  different  spirit — it  might  have  assuaged  the  bit- 
terness which  that  measure  caused,  and  produced  a  cor- 
dial amalgamation  of  the  two  nations.  Even  after  this 
time  there  had  been  opportunities  when  the  policy  of 
Grattan  and  Plunket  might  have  prevailed,  and  when 
emancipation  might  have  been  carried  without  any  seri- 
ous social  or  political  convulsion,  and  accompanied  by 
substantial  guarantees  of  the  loyalty  of  the  priesthood. 
It  was  delayed  until  sectarian  feeling  on  both  sides, 
and  in  both  countries,  had  acquired  an  enduring  inten- 
sity, and  it  was  at  last  conceded  in  a  manner  that  pro- 
duced no  gratitude,  and  was  the  strongest  incentive  to 
further  agitation.  There  could  be  no  worse  precedent 
in  Ireland  than  the  concession  of  a  great  measure  of 
justice  forced  from  its  opponents  by  the  threat  of  an- 
archy and  civil  war.  The  fever  of  agitation  passed  into 
the  system  of  the  nation,  and  all  the  ties  of  property 
and  rank  were  giving  way.  The  Irish  landed  gentry 
had  grown  up  under  circumstances  which  were  in  many 
respects  extremely  unfavourable  and  demoralising,  and 
which  left  indelible  traces  on  their  character,  but  no 
candid  judge  could  assert  that  they  were  altogether 
without  qualities  of  a  high  order.  The  noble  efflores- 
cence of  political  and  oratorical  genius  among  Irishmen 
in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  the  perfect  calm  with 
which  great  measures  for  the  relief  of  the  Catholics 
which  would  have  been  impossible  in  England  were  re- 


O'CONNELL'S  VIOLENCE  89 

ceived  in  Ireland;  above  all  the  manner  in  which  the 
volunteer  movement  was  organised,  directed,  and  con- 
trolled, are  decisive  proofs.  On  the  Catholic  question 
they  were  certainly  less  bigoted  than  the  corresponding 
class  in  England,  and  there  was  a  time  when  their  peo- 
ple readily  followed  them.  But  the  political  leadership, 
even  of  the  most  liberal,  was  now  fatally  weakened,  and 
the  substitution  of  the  priests  for  the  landlords  as  the 
leaders  of  the  people  was  rapidly  advancing.  '  I  have 
polled  all  the  gentry  and  all  the  50/.  freeholders,^  wrote 
Mr.  Fitzgerald  to  Sir  R.  Peel  when  giving  an  account 
of  his  defeat,  ^  the  gentry  to  a  man. '  '  All  the  great 
interests  broke  down,  and  the  desertion  has  been  uni- 
versal.' The  attitude  the  landlord  class  afterwards 
assumed  during  the  agitation  for  repeal  completed  the 
change,  and  they  never  regained  their  old  position. 

The  extreme  violence  of  O'Connell  during  this  con- 
troversy and  the  democratic  character  he  had  given  to 
Catholic  policy  alienated  from  him  many  of  the  most 
moderate  and  respectable  of  his  own  co-religionists,  as 
well  as  of  the  Protestant  supporters  of  Catholic  Eman- 
cipation. All  that  can  be  said  on  this  subject  is  that 
if  he  had  adopted  a  different  tone  he  never  could  have 
achieved  what  he  had  accomplished,  and  surely  the 
larger  part  of  the  blame  must  attach  to  those  who  by 
delaying  the  concession  made  such  means  indispensable 
to  success.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  immediately  after 
the  triumph  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  O'Connell  was 
blackballed  at  an  English  Catholic  club.  With  the 
English  Catholics,  indeed,  he  never  was  popular,  and 
he  was  accustomed  laughingly  to  say  that  the  great  de- 
fect of  the  Emancipation  Act  was  that  it  did  not  ex- 
clude them.  At  the  same  time  a  large  proportion  of 
the  leading  gentry  of  Ireland — among  others  the  Duke 
of  Leinster — so  far  supported  him,  while  he  was  on 


90         LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

excellent  terms  with  several  of  the  Whig  leaders  in 
England. 

In  *  The  Greville  Memoirs '  there  is  an  interesting 
sketch  of  O'Connell  as  he  appeared  at  this  time.  Gre- 
ville himself  had  not  then  met  him,  but  he  formed  his 
judgment  from  a  very  competent  friend,  who  had  been 
in  Ireland  during  the  recent  struggle.  He  noticed  that 
O'Connell  and  Shell  at  heart  disliked  one  another, 
though  Shell  did  not  venture  to  oppose  O'Connell. 
There  were  many  in  the  Catholic  Association  who  would 
like  to  thwart  him,  but  with  the  great  masses  of  the 
people  he  was  omnipotent,  and  no  one  had  a  chance  of 
supplanting  him.  As  an  orator  he  would  probably  fail 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  but  in  addressing  a  mob, 
and  especially  an  Irish  mob,  he  was  unequalled.  He 
knew  exactly  the  style  and  manner  that  suited  their 
taste.  He  was,  however,  much  more  than  a  mere  ad- 
venturer or  mob  orator.  He  had  large  landed  prop- 
erty, stood  at  the  head  of  his  profession,  was  an  admir- 
able lawyer,  a  man  of  high  moral  character  and  great 
probity  in  private  life.  He  was  one  of  the  hardest  of 
Avorkers,  rising  at  3  a.m.  and  going  to  bed  at  8.  He 
had  a  strong  desire  to  reform  his  profession.  He  con- 
stantly gave  legal  assistance  gratuitously  to  the  poorer 
members  of  his  creed.  If  his  language  was  violent,  it 
should  at  least  be  remembered  that  he  himself  had  long 
been  the  object  of  the  most  scurrilous  abuse,  and  also 
that  he  was  obliged  to  speak  to  the  Irish  in  the  strain 
to  which  they  were  used  and  which  pleased  them. 
'  Had  he  never  been  violent  he  would  not  be  the  man 
he  is,  and  Ireland  would  not  have  been  emancipated.' 
Greville  met  him  for  the  first  time  at  dinner  in  1829, 
and  found  him,  in  society,  not  at  all  remarkable,  but 
*  lively,  well-bred  and  at  his  ease.' 

The  belief  that  he  would  almost  certainly  fail  in  the 


O'CONNELL  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS  91 

Britisli  House  of  Commons,  and  that  this  would  react 
greatly  upon  his  position  in  Ireland,  appears  to  have 
been  very  general  among  the  best  judges.  The  House 
of  Commons  at  this  time  contained  several  men  of  bril- 
liant oratorical  and  debating  powers,  but  with  scarcely 
an  exception  they  had  entered  it — usually  for  small 
boroughs — at  a  very  early  age,  and  had  attained  their 
position  by  long  training  in  the  tone  and  methods  of 
English  parliamentary  life.  O'Connell  was  now  fifty- 
four,  and  although  he  had  been  for  many  years  a 
prominent  politician  and  orator,  he  had  lived  in  an 
atmosphere  which  was  the  worst  preparation  for  a  par- 
liamentary career.  The  kind  of  speaking  which  is  most 
effective  before  an  Irish  jury,  and  the  kind  of  speaking 
which  delights  and  sways  an  Irish  mob,  were  as  far  as 
possible  removed  from  that  of  a  skilful  parliamentary 
debater,  and,  as  0' Council  well  knew,  he  was  entering 
a  House  which  was  deeply  prejudiced  against  him. 

*I  do  not  fear  firebrands  in  this  House,'  Canning 
had  once  said;  '  as  soon  as  they  touch  its  floor  they  hiss 
and  expire,'  and  the  first  proceeding  of  O'Connell  after 
his  election  was  well  fitted  to  strengthen  the  misgivings 
of  his  friends.  There  was  not  much  doubt  that  the 
construction  of  the  Emancipation  Act  excluded  him 
from  Parliament  without  a  re-election,  but  the  question 
was  at  least  susceptible  of  legal  argument,  and  O'Con- 
nell determined  to  dispute  it.  He  first  went  down  to 
the  Catholic  Association  and  announced  his  intentions 
in  a  long  speech.  It  was  in  his  worst  style  of  mob  ora- 
tory, boastful,  arrogant  and  coarse.  He  was  going,  he 
said,  to  the  House  to  defy  the  base  offal  of  his  own  pro- 
fession; the  representatives  of  the  rotten  boroughs  and 
corrupt  aristocracy  of  the  Empire.  He  would  beard 
the  Speaker  in  his  den;  if  the  Speaker  decided  against 
his  right  to  sit,  he  would  show  him  how  poor  a  lawyer 


92        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

he  was.  He  would  ask  the  SjDeaker  what  rotten  bor- 
ough had  sent  him  to  adjudicate  upon  the  rights  of  the 
representatives  of  the  people.  He  would  go  to  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament,  attended  by  the  aristocracy  and  gentry 
of  Ireland,  and  no  country  could  boast  of  a  nobler  aris- 
tocracy. No  member  in  his  presence  would  dare  to 
revile  his  country  or  insult  his  creed.  Speaking  of  this 
kind  might  be  well  calculated  to  win  the  applause  of 
the  audience  to  which  it  was  addressed,  but  it  needed 
no  great  sagacity  to  predict  that  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons it  would  be  absolutely  fatal  to  a  parliamentary 
career. 

To  those  who  would  understand  O'Connell's  power 
and  the  versatility  on  which  it  so  largely  depended,  it 
is  instructive  to  compare  his  promises  to  the  Catholic 
Association  with  his  speech  on  the  same  subject  at  the 
bar  of  the  House.  This  speech  at  once  established  his 
parliamentary  position.  Clear,  pointed,  admirably  rea- 
soned and  admirably  arranged,  without  the  slightest 
tinge  either  of  egotism  or  declamation  or  bad  taste,  it 
was  a  legal  argument  of  the  best  kind,  delivered  with 
perfect  simplicity  of  gesture,  with  consummate  beauty 
of  voice  and  with  complete  self-possession  of  manner. 
There  appears  to  have  been  but  one  opinion  of  its  merits, 
and  from  this  time  no  one  doubted  that  O'Connell  could 
at  once  take  a  leading  place  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
He  often  at  later  periods  offended  it,  sometimes  by 
things  he  said  in  it,  more  frequently  by  things  he  said 
or  did  outside  its  walls  which  were  referred  to  in  de- 
bate, but  quite  apart  from  the  considerable  voting  power 
at  his  disposal  he  could  always  command  its  attention, 
and  he  was  always  a  leading  figure  in  its  debates. 
Roebuck,  who  was  no  bad  judge  of  parliamentary  ora- 
tory, pronounced  him  the  first  orator  of  his  generation, 
and  it  is  certainly  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  he  con- 


O'CONNELL'S  ORATORY  93 

tended  on  equal  terms  with  the  very  best.  His  bound- 
less readiness,  his  power  of  terse,  nervous,  Demosthenic 
reasoning,  his  thorough  mastery  of  the  subjects  he 
treated,  the  skill  with  which  he  condensed  and  pointed 
his  case,  and  the  rich  flow  of  his  humorous  or  pathetic 
eloquence,  placed  him  at  once  in  the  foremost  rank. 
His  speeches  were  usually  short,  condensed  and  com- 
pletely spontaneous,  and  they  were  marked  by  unfail- 
ing lucidity  and  by  great  quickness  in  argument  and 
repartee.  They  were  sometimes,  it  is  true,  much  de- 
faced by  violence,  exaggeration,  and  bad  taste.  He 
never  won  the  respect  of  the  House.  He  never  quite 
caught  its  tone;  and  he  never  aspired  to  the  highly 
polished  rhetoric  of  Macaulay  or  Shell.  Peel  may  have 
surpassed  him  in  the  tact  and  adroitness  of  a  debater, 
and  Stanley  may  have  equalled  him  in  dialectic  dex- 
terity, in  the  fire  of  his  temper  and  in  his  mastery  of 
pure,  graceful  and  vigorous  English,  but  there  was  a 
commanding  power  in  O'Connell's  treatment  of  a  great 
subject  and  a  majestic  roll  in  his  simple,  unadorned 
language,  which  place  his  greatest  speeches  among  the 
masterpieces  of  parliamentary  eloquence. 

He  spoke  very  frequently  and  attended  closely  to  all 
parliamentary  affairs.  In  1833  he  mentions  in  one  of 
hif  letters  that  he  had  not  missed  a  single  day  in  a 
parliamentary  session  which  extended  to  seven  months. 
In  another  year  it  was  calculated  that  he  spoke  oftener 
than  any  member  except  Lord  Althorp,  who  was  then 
leadei  of  the  House. ^  Yet  he  always  observed  the  rules 
ot  the  game,  and  though  sometimes  violent  and  indec- 
orous, he  never  appears  to  have  been  himself  guilty 
oi  the  systematic  waste  of  time  which  has  in  our  day 
become  so  prominent. 


^  See  Smyth's  Ireland,  Historical  and  Statistical,  iii.  446. 


9i        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

He  spoke  on  all  Irish,  subjects,  but  also  on  very 
many  others.  He  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  ad- 
vocates of  parliamentary  reform  of  the  most  radical  de- 
scription, going  as  far  as  universal  suffrage,  the  ballot, 
and  an  elective  House  of  Lords.  He  was  an  early  and 
steady  supporter  of  the  emancipation  of  the  Jews.  He 
spoke  with  great  force  and  knowledge  on  questions  of 
legal  reform;  on  the  importance  of  cheapening,  sim- 
plifying, and  codifying  the  law,  of  multiplying  local 
tribunals,  of  abolishing  obsolete  forms  and  phraseology. 
He  was  an  ardent  advocate  of  the  abolition  of  capital 
punishment.  He  wished  to  change  the  law  of  bequests, 
so  as  to  make  it  obligatory  on  parents  to  leave  at  least 
half  their  property  among  their  children.  He  sup- 
ported the  abolition  of  the  Usury  Acts,  and  agreed  with 
Bentham  about  the  folly  of  attempting  to  regulate  the 
rate  of  interest  by  law.  He  spoke  in  favour  of  the  abo- 
lition of  flogging  in  the  army;  of  the  abolition  of  the 
taxes  on  knowledge;  of  the  complete  abolition  of  the 
game  laws. 

He  was  a  steady  and  most  vehement  opponent  of 
slavery,  and  he  showed  his  hatred  of  it  when  to  do  so 
seemed  very  contrary  to  his  immediate  interests.  In 
spite  of  his  strong  democratic  leaning  in  favour  of 
widely  diffused  representative  government,  he  deplored 
that  the  extension  of  self-government  to  the  colonies 
had  been  opposed  to  the  interests  of  the  negroes,  as 
more  was  done  in  the  direction  of  emancipation  when 
the  colonies  were  under  the  immediate  control  of  the 
Crown  than  when  they  were  governed  by  colonial  legis- 
latures. He  opposed  violently  and  persistently  the 
grant  of  twenty  millions  to  the  slave-owners  in  the 
West  Indies  at  the  time  when  their  slaves  were  emanci- 
pated. During  his  repeal  agitation  it  was  very  impor- 
tant to  him  to  obtain  American  support,  and  a  consid- 


O'CONNELL  ON  SLAVERY  95 

erable  proportion  of  the  contributions  to  the  agitation 
came  from  America;  but  he  offended  bitterly  great  sec- 
tiouE  of  American  opinion  by  his  unqualified  denuncia- 
tions of  negro  slavery.  Subscriptions  from  slave-owners 
were  refused  by  the  Repeal  Association,  and  no  remon- 
strance could  induce  O'Connell  to  refrain  from  express- 
ing, both  at  anti-slavery  meetings  and  also  in  the  House 
ol  Commons,  his  abhorrence  of  slavery  and  his  con- 
tempt for  a  Government  which  protected  it,  while  plac- 
ing in  the  forefront  of  its  Constitution  a  declaration 
that  all  men  were  born  equal  and  free.  When  he  was 
remonstrated  with  upon  the  imprudence  of  throwing 
away  a  support  which  might  be  useful  to  his  cause,  he 
replied :  '  I  would  rather  have  one  Irish  landed  propri- 
etor of  weight  than  all  their  slave-breeders.  It  is  our- 
selves alone  must  work  out  repeal.' ' 

In  foreign  politics  he  was  chiefly  guided  by  Catholic 
interests.  The  Em-peror  Nicholas  of  Russia  was  the 
object  of  his  special  abhorrence,  on  account  of  his  treat- 
ment of  Poland  and  of  Catholics.  He  described  him 
as  'the  Monster  Nicholas,'  'the  greatest  persecutor  of 
Catholicity  who  has  lived  since  the  days  of  Diocletian.'  ^ 
He  was  an  enthusiastic  eulogist  of  the  insurrection  of 
Belgium  against  Holland,  and  an  enthusiastic  supporter 
of  the  Catholic  liberal  movement  on  the  Continent. 
He  was  also  an  uncompromising  advocate  of  free  trade 
in  all  its  forms,  including  the  complete  abolition  of  the 
Corn  Laws.  His  policy  on  this  question  is  very  remark- 
able, for  Ireland  had  a  special  interest  in  the  question, 
which  O'Connell  seems  never  to  have  understood. 
Nothing  was  more  contrary  to  his  desire  than  that  her 
population  should  be  greatly  diminished  and  that  she 


^  O'Neill    Daunt,    Personal  ^  Letter  to  Lord  Shrewsbury, 

Recollections  of  O'Connell,  i.      p.  101. 
287. 


96        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

should  be  turned  into  a  great  pastoral  country,  yet 
nothing  is  more  clear  than  that  the  abolition  of  the 
Corn  Laws,  depriving  her  of  her  preferential  position 
in  the  corn  market  of  England,  made  such  a  change 
inevitable.  O'Connell  argued  the  question  on  the  crud- 
est and  also  the  most  extreme  lines,  treating  any  tax 
on  food  as  simply  immoral.  In  his  letter  to  Lord 
Shrewsbury  he  accused  that  Catholic  nobleman  of  hav- 
ing *  stained  Catholicity  itself  with  the  guilt  of  that 
sordid  monopoly.'  *  The  provision  tax,'  he  wrote,  *  is 
in  its  nature  most  criminal.  It  is  murderous.  It  is 
the  most  direct  violation  of  the  first  principles  of  justice. 
...  It  is  in  itself  so  radically  oppressive  and  unjast 
that  it  is  incapable  of  moral  mitigation.  .  .  .  The 
protected  person,  by  the  voice  of  the  Corn  Laws,  ad- 
dresses the  workman:  **  You  shall  not  buy  your  break- 
fast, though  you  have  your  own  hard-earned  money  to 
buy  it  with,  until  you  have  first  paid  me  a  heavy  tax 
for  liberty  to  purchase."  '  It  is  curious  to  find  him  in 
the  same  letter  deploring  the  depopulation  of  Ireland 
by  '  landlords  who  cleared  their  farms  of  human  beings 
to  augment  the  number  of  oxen  and  swine.'  He  was 
a  powerful  opponent  of  the  income-tax,  though  Peel, 
who  imposed  it,  refused  to  extend  it  to  Ireland,  and  no 
one  put  more  clearly  or  more  forcibly  the  unequal  inci- 
dence of  the  tax  falling  on  incomes  derived  from  pre- 
carious professional  incomes  and  from  settled  property. 
A  clerkship  in  a  merchant's  office  at  a  salary  of  200Z.  a 
year  would  not  sell  for  more  than  lOOZ.  A  fee-simple 
estate  of  200/.  a  year  would  in  England  sell  for  6,000?. 
Yet  the  clerk  and  the  fee-simple  owner  will  pay  the  same 
income-tax.  He  predicted  also  that  the  tax,  once  adopted 
in  England,  would  speedily  be  extended  to  Ireland,  and 
he  was  provoked  that  the  Irish  people  failed  to  realise 
how  inevitably  this  assimilation  would  be  carried  out. 


PERSONAL  AMBITION  97 


PAKT  II 

The  course  O'Connell  adopted  after  the  great  triumpli 
of  1839  forms  the  turning  point  of  his  career.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  of  the  highest  possible  im- 
portance both  to  Ireland  and  to  the  Empire  that  the 
fierce  agitation  which  had  arisen  should  be  calmed 
down,  and  that  the  Catholics  who  entered  Parliament 
should  acquiesce  in  the  conditions  of  parliamentary  life 
and  falsify  the  predictions  of  their  enemies.  It  is 
equally  certain  that  O'Connell  had  not  the  least  desire 
to  lay  aside  the  sceptre  and  to  allow  the  agitation  he 
had  created  to  languish. 

It  is  not  very  easy  to  judge  equitably  his  conduct 
at  this  period.  In  England  and  by  some  of  the  most 
eminent  judges  it  was  ascribed  to  the  meanest  motives. 
^If  he  had  ceased  agitating/  Lord  Clarendon  once 
wrote,  '  when  emancipation  w^as  carried,  he  would  have 
been  as  great  a  man  in  his  way  as  Washington,  but  he 
continued  it  for  purposes  most  mischievous  as  regards 
the  people  and  most  selfish  as  regards  himself.  Ilis 
whole  object  was  money  and  power;  the  latter  in  order 
to  make  it  subservient  to  the  former/ 

That  a  large  element  of  personal  ambition  entered 
into  his  conduct  will  hardly,  I  think,  be  denied  by  those 
who  study  his  intimate  correspondence.  He  had  risen 
by  his  own  unassisted  power  to  a  position  unexampled 
in  Europe,  and  incarnated  in  himself,  as  hardly  any 
man  had  ever  done  before,  the  passions,  wishes,  and 
aspirations  of  the  great  masses  of  his  countrymen,  and 
he  had  a  keen  delight  in  the  exercise  of  his  power.     No 

VOL.  II.  7 


98        LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN   IRELAND 

one  appreciated  more  what,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  he 
called  '  All  the  racy  triumphs  at  the  success  of  agita- 
tion which  an  agitator  by  profession  can  alone  enjoy.'  ^ 
His  energy  was  inexhaustible.  He  delighted  in  being 
continually  in  the  mouths  of  men,  and  in  exercising 
that  power  of  swaying  great  crowds  which  is  at  once 
one  of  the  most  intoxicating  and  one  of  the  most  dan- 
gerous of  human  gifts.  A  great  abdication  of  popu- 
larity and  power  was  a  thing  which  was  wholly  alien  to 
his  nature.  Grattan  was  capable  of  it,  but  his  patri- 
otism was  of  a  very  different  temper,  and  it  is  worthy 
of  note  that  O'Connell  always  blamed  the  conduct  of 
Grattan  after  his  triumph  in  1782,  and  always  main- 
tained that  Flood  had  acted  with  the  truer  insight  into 
the  needs  of  the  country.  Fitzpatrick  has  related,  ap- 
parently on  the  best  authority,  the  following  character- 
istic anecdote.  On  the  night  when  Catholic  Emanci- 
pation was  carried  one  of  O'Connell's  friends  slapped 
him  on  the  shoulder,  exclaiming,  *  Othello's  occupa- 
tion's gone ! '  '  Gone ! '  cried  the  Liberator,  with  an 
arch  smile ;  '  isn't  there  a  Repeal  of  the  Union?  ' ' 

He  was  at  this  time  also  violently  exasperated  with 
the  government  of  Wellington  and  Peel.  He  very  nat- 
urally considered  that  he  owed  them  no  gratitude  for 
emancipation,  and  he  detested  both  with  all  the  fervour 
of  his  nature.  His  language  about  Wellington  in  pub- 
lic was  abundantl}'  violent,  but  it  paled  before  that  of 
his  private  letters.  *  If  Wellington  be  made  Prime 
Minister,  all  the  horrors  of  actual  massacre  threaten  us. 
That  villain  has  neither  heart  nor  head.'  '  He  is  per- 
haps the  only  *' great  man"  the  world  ever  saw  who 
had  not  one  single  trait  of  patriotism,  and  never  exhib- 
ited one  generous  or  noble  sentiment  either  in  expression 


*  Fitzpatrick,  i.  126.  '  Ibid.  if.  229. 


EFFECTS  OF  THE  EMANCIPATION  ACT  99 

or  in  deed.' '  Such  was  his  estimate  of  the  greatest  of 
living  Irishmen,  of  a  statesman  who  with  many  hmita- 
tions  brought  at  least  to  public  life  an  absolute  disin- 
terestedness and  an  inflexible  sense  of  duty  that  have 
never  been  surpassed  in  English  history. 

Many  things,  indeed,  had  conspired  to  provoke 
O'Connell — the  clause  in  the  Emancipation  Act  which 
obliged  him  to  return  to  his  constituents  for  re-elec- 
tion; the  suppression  of  the  Catholic  Association;  the 
suppression  of  the  405.  freeholders,  who  would  now 
have  been  the  most  powerful  weapon  in  his  hands;  a 
temporary  but  most  arbitrary  Act  giving  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant power  to  suppress  by  simple  proclamation  any 
association  or  assembly  he  might  deem  dangerous.  By 
the  Emancipation  Act  the  higher  positions  at  the  Bar 
were  thrown  open  as  well  as  seats  in  Parliament.  A 
distribution  of  silk  gowns  naturally  followed,  and  while 
several  Roman  Catholic  barristers  obtained  this  distinc- 
tion, O'Connell,  who  on  purely  professional  grounds 
incontestably  held  the  foremost  position,  was  passed 
over.  Among  those  who  obtained  a  silk  gown  was 
Shell,  who  had  been  his  ablest  co-operator  in  the  recent 
struggle. 

The  disfranchisement  of  the  405.  freeholders  appeared 
peculiarly  ungracious  when  they  had  just  for  the  first 
time  displayed  a  real  independence.  It  was,  however, 
a  measure  of  great  national  importance.  It  lessened  the 
overwhelming  preponderance  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
electorate.  It  struck  off  a  number  of  voters  who  were 
far  too  ignorant  and  too  abjectly  poor  to  be  safely 


^  Fitzpatrick  i.  140;   ii.  145.  in    recognition  of  his  conduct 

He  appears,  however,  to  have  about    emancipation  in  1820. 

acquiesced  in  a  project  chiefly  By    Wellington's     desire     the 

started  by  the  Duke  of  Leinster  project  was  abandoned.      Fa- 

for  a  testimonial  to  Wellington  ga,n,Life  of  O'Connell,  i.  686. 


100       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

trusted  with  the  exercise  of  political  power,  and  it  in 
some  degree  checked  the  fatal  tendency  to  subdivision 
of  land.  The  power  given  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of 
proclaiming  meetings  was  in  the  disturbed  condition 
of  the  country  perhaps  necessary,  and  at  all  events  it 
was  a  governing  instrument  of  real  eflScacy.  But  the 
slight  thrown  upon  O'Connell  as  an  advocate  was  a 
mere  idle  insult,  evidently  designed  to  mark  the  repro- 
bation with  which  the  ministers  regarded  his  career, 
and  the  obligation  imposed  on  him  of  going  again  to 
his  constituents  for  election  might  without  difficulty 
have  been  avoided.  Peel,  it  is  true,  has  left  a  defence 
of  this  measure.  He  very  solemnly  denies  that  it  was 
due  to  personal  jealousy  or  pique.  It  was  intended, 
he  said,  to  conciliate  the  opponents  of  concession;  and 
with  the  King,  the  House  of  Lords,  and  probably  the 
majority  of  the  English  people  opposed  to  emancipa- 
tion, something  of  the  kind  was  required.  But  it  was 
a  proceeding  which  in  a  most  critical  moment  had  the 
effect  of  irritating  the  Roman  Catholics  to  the  utmost 
without  in  any  degree  diminishing  their  power,  and  of 
completely  preventing  the  pacific  efiects  that  concession 
might  naturally  have  had.  It  was  manifestly  directed 
personally  against  0' Conn  ell.  It  was,  of  course,  utterly 
impotent,  for  O'Connell  was  at  once  re-elected,  but  it 
was  accepted  by  him  and  by  the  whole  people  as  an  j 
insult  and  a  defiance. 

In  estimating  the  political  character  of  Sir  E.  Peel, 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  on  the  most  momentous 
question  of  his  time  he  was  for  many  years  the  obsti- 
nate opponent  of  a  measure  which  is  now  almost  uni- 
versally admitted  to  have  been  not  only  just,  but  inevita- 
ble; that  his  policy  having  driven  Ireland  to  the  verge  of 
civil  war,  he  yielded  the  boon  he  had  so  long  refused  sim- 
ply to  a  menace  of  force;  and  that  he  accompanied  the 


EXASPERATION  OF  O'CONNELL  101 

concession  by  a  display  of  petty  and  impotent  provocation 
which  deprived  it  of  half  its  utility  and  of  all  its  grace. 

The  exasperation  of  O'Connell  was  extreme.  He 
denounced  the  ministry  of  Wellington  and  Peel  with 
reckless  violence,  endeavoured  in  1830  and  1831  to  em- 
barrass it  by  mischievous  letters  recommending  a  run 
upon  gold,  revived  the  Catholic  Association  under  new 
names  and  forms,  and  energetically  agitated  for  the 
repeal  of  the  Union. 

In  addition,  however,  to  these  personal  considera- 
tions there  is  one  of  another  kind  which  may  be  urged 
in  explanation  and  palliation  of  O'Connell's  proceed- 
ings after  1829,  and  which  has  not,  I  think,  been  suffi- 
ciently considered  in  England.  The  mass  of  the  Irish 
Catholics  had  been  brought  to  a  state  of  frenzied  ex- 
citement which  was  in  the  highest  degree  dangerous 
and  extremely  likely  to  break  out  into  armed  rebellion. 
All  the  confidential  correspondence  of  the  Government 
as  well  as  the  language  of  independent  writers  attests 
the  fact.  Greville,  describing  the  situation,  says  that 
O'Connell  believed  that  he  could  keep  the  country  quiet 
for  another  year,  but  that  Dr.  Doyle,  the  ablest  of  the 
Catholic  bishops,  feared  and  believed  that  this  was  im- 
possible. The  prevailing  feeling  of  the  great  ignorant 
masses  in  Ireland  was  undoubtedly  that  the  victory  they 
had  achieved  was  only  the  forerunner  of  an  armed  rebel- 
lion which  was  to  break  down  English  dominion  in 
Ireland.  The  constant  question,  it  was  noticed,  among 
them  was,  '  When  will  the  Counsellor  call  us  out  ? ' ' 
Whatever  may  be  said  in  other  respects  against  O'Con- 
nell, two  things  were  always  among  the  foremost  ob- 
jects of  his  life.  One  was  to  convince  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen of  the  folly  and  the  criminality  of  secret  illegal 


*  O'Neill  Daunt's  Recollections,  ii.  137. 


102      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

associations  and  agrarian  crimes.  The  other  was  to 
prevent  the  political  movement  from  degenerating  into 
armed  rebellion.  His  power  of  restraining  the  people 
was  truly  wonderful,  more  wonderful  even  than  his 
power  of  exciting  them,  but  he  restrained  them  by  flat- 
tering them,  by  humouring  them,  by  using  the  kind 
of  inflammatory  language  they  liked  ;  by  often  yielding 
to  their  pressure.  If  in  this  moment  of  fierce  passion 
and  on  the  morrow  of  a  great  triumph,  which  had  not 
been  conceded  to  argument,  but  wrung  by  popular 
pressure  from  a  hostile  ministry  which  was  still  in 
power,  he  had  adopted  a  quiescent  or  passive  or  tem- 
porising policy,  is  it  likely  that  he  would  have  retained 
his  power  of  control  ?  Is  it  not  probable  that  other  and 
more  violent  men  w^ould  have  taken  his  place,  and  that 
instead  of  a  repeal  agitation  Ireland  would  have  drifted 
into  another  rebellion  ? 

Altogether,  apart  from  the  repeal  question,  there 
were  grievances  which  a  fervent  Catholic  whose  great 
object  was  to  break  down  Protestant  ascendency,  and 
who  found  himself  the  master  of  a  political  organisa- 
tion of  tremendous  power,  could  not  possibly  have 
neglected.  The  Irish  system  of  tithes  and  the  Vestry 
Act,  which  enabled  Protestants  to  tax  Catholics  for  the 
repair  of  Protestant  churches,  were  the  most  prominent; 
and,  beside  these,  there  w^as  much  to  be  objected  to  in  the 
agrarian  laws  and  in  the  exclusively  Protestant  adminis- 
tration of  justice.  0' Council  always  attached  the  high- 
est importance  to  questions  of  patronage,  maintaining 
that  in  Ireland  the  laws  themselves  were  less  important 
than  the  spirit  in  which  they  were  administered.  In 
scarcely  one  year  since  the  Union  had  Ireland  been 
governed  by  ordinary  law.^     The  Habeas  Corpus  Act, 


»  Doubleday,  Life  of  Peel,  i.  482,  483. 


THE  ADDRESS  OF  THE  HUNDRED   PROMISES       103 

which  is  perhaps  the  most  important  part  of  the  British 
Constitution,  was  suspended  in  Ireland  in  1800,  from 
1803  to  1805,  from  1807  till  1810,  in  1814,  from  1823 
to  1824/  In  1833,  four  years  after  Catholic  Emanci- 
pation, there  was  not  in  Ireland  a  single  Catholic  judge 
or  stipendiary  magistrate.  All  the  high  sheriffs,  with 
one  exception,  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  un- 
paid magistrates  and  of  the  grand  jurors,  the  five  in- 
spectors-general, and  the  thirty-two  inspectors  of  police 
were  Protestants,  while  the  chief  towns  were  in  the 
hands  of  narrow,  corrupt,  and,  for  the  most  part,  in- 
tensely bigoted  corporations.  The  reform  of  the  grand 
jury  system  and  of  municipal  government  were  among 
the  objects  O'Connell  specially  desired. 

In  his  address  to  the  electors  of  Clare  when  he  went 
to  the  county  for  re-election  a  long  list  was  given  of  the 
objects  he  undertook  to  achieve  if  sent  into  Parliament. 
It  was  nicknamed  '  the  address  of  the  hundred  prom- 
ises,' and  in  the  first  draft  he  announced  his  intention 
to  start  at  once  an  agitation  for  the  repeal  of  the  Union. 
With  great  difficulty,  and  on  the  earnest  entreaty  of 
some  of  the  most  important  supporters  of  the  Catholic 
cause,  and  especially  of  Lord  Anglesey,  he  was  induced 
to  suppress  this  clause,  but  his  intention  remained  un- 
changed. It  was,  as  we  have  already  seen,  one  of  his 
earliest  dreams,  and  even  in  the  very  height  of  the 
emancipation  struggle  he  had  clearly  contemplated  it. 
In  1828  he  wrote  to  Lord  Cloncurry  that  repeal  must 
soon  be  the  object.'  In  one  of  the  last  speeches  he 
made  in  the  Catholic  Association  he  predicted  that  the 
repeal  of  oppressive  laws  against  religion  would  be  fol- 
lowed by  an  amalgamation  of  all  sects  and  denomina- 


'  May's  Constitutional  History y  ii.  370. 
« Fitzpatrick,  i.  168. 


104       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tions  in  Ireland,  and  added  that  without  such  amalga- 
mation *  we  never  can  procure  the  repeal  of  that  odious 
and  abominable  measure,  the  Union.'  *  As  late  as 
January  1829  he  declared  that  in  order  to  accomplish 
repeal  he  would  give  up  emancipation  itself,  and  that 
he  expected  in  such  a  struggle  to  meet  with  the  co- 
operation of  all  sects  and  parties.'^  '  If  the  people  will 
keej^  quiet/  he  wrote  in  1830,  'and  allow  me  to  regu- 
late, I  think  I  am  certain  of  procuring  the  repeal  of 
the  Union.' '  It  was  his  favourite  hope  that  he  would 
win  the  great  body  of  Irish  Protestants  to  join  with 
him  in  the  new  cry,  and  that  its  object  might  be 
achieved  without  violence  or  disturbance.  '  We  never/ 
he  wrote,  '  can  repeal  the  Union,  which  every  day  be- 
comes more  and  more  pressing,  except  by  keeping  clear 
of  any  illegality  whatsoever.'  * 

He  sometimes  spoke  as  if  he  was  pushed  on  irresist- 
ibly by  the  popular  feeling  behind  him.  He  described 
himself  as  a  straw  floating  on  a  stream  which  indicated 
but  did  not  make  the  current.  '  Believe  me,'  he  said, 
'  there  is  an  under-swell  in  the  Irish  people  which  is 
much  more  formidable  than  any  sudden  or  showy  ex- 
hibition of  irritation.'  But  the  truth  is  that  he  was 
pressing  on  the  agitation  with  all  his  power.  '  This,'  he 
wrote,  '  is  emphatically  the  moment  to  get  as  many 
places  as  possible  to  petition  for  the  repeal  of  the 
Union.' ^  If  O'Connell  had  not  raised  the  cry  of  re- 
peal it  is  probable  that  it  would  never  have  become 
formidable,  though  it  is  also  true,  as  O'Connell  clearly 
saw,  that  with  the  exception  of  the  abolition  of  tithes 
this  was  the  one  question  on  which  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  could  be  speedily  and  genuinely  aroused — 

^  Fagan,  i.  625.  ^  Fitzpatrick,  i.  273. 

« Ibid.  '  Ibid.  i.  229. 

'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  333. 


RISE  OF   THE  REPEAL  AGITATION  105 

the  one  chord  that  would  be  responded  to  through  the 
length  and  breadth  of  Catholic  Ireland. 

He  had,  however,  abundant  evidence  that  a  move- 
ment for  repeal  would  be  of  a  very  different  kind  from 
a  struggle  for  Catholic  Emancipation.  In  that  strug- 
gle the  Catholics  could  count  on  the  general  support  of 
the  whole  body  of  the  English  Whigs,  of  a  considerable 
section  of  the  English  Tories,  including,  as  Sir  Robert 
Peel  noticed,  most  of  the  rising  men  of  ability,  and 
also  of  a  large  and  perhaps  preponderating  section  of 
the  English  press,  but  all  classes  of  Englishmen  of  any 
weight  saw  in  the  repeal  movement  a  movement  for  the 
disruption  of  the  Empire,  and  the  struggle  for  repeal 
would  naturally  divide  the  two  islands  and  throw  the 
whole  popular  sentiment  of  Ireland  in  opposition  to 
England.  To  the  Whig  party,  who  had  for  long  years 
sacrificed  power  and  influence  for  the  Catholic  cause, 
nothing  could  be  more  mortifying.  They  had  steadily 
maintained  that  the  admission  of  Catholics  to  Parlia- 
ment would  be  at  once  a  just,  safe,  and  moderate  mea- 
sure, which  would  pacify  Ireland  and  strengthen  and 
consolidate  the  Empire.  They  now  found  it  made  the 
starting  point  of  a  new  and  far  more  dangerous  agita- 
tion for  breaking  up  the  Imperial  Parliament.  Nor 
were  the  effects  on  the  internal  condition  of  Ireland 
likely  to  be  less  serious.  By  an  inversion  of  parties, 
which  seems  at  first  sight  strange,  but  which  was  in 
truth  very  natural,  nearly  all  those  who  had  most 
strenuously  opposed  the  Union  when  it  was  orginally 
carried  were  equally  strenuous  opponents  of  repeal. 
The  Irish  Parliament  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  something  like  an  enlarged  grand  jury, 
or  like  the  present  Synod  of  the  disestablished  Church. 
It  represented  in  the  highest  degree  the  property,  and 
especially  the  landed  property,  as  well  as  the  intelli- 


106      LEADERS. OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

gence  of  the  country.  It  placed  the  management  of 
Irish  affairs  in  the  hands  of  the  Irish  aristocracy  and 
resident  landlords,  with  a  large  admixture  of  the  lead- 
ing Protestant  lawyers  ;  but  their  power  was  qualified 
by  an  inordinate  number  of  nomination  boroughs  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  under  Government  control. 

There  was  no  inconsistency  in  maintaining  that  in 
the  peculiar  condition  of  Ireland  such  a  Parliament 
was,  or  might  be  made,  a  very  efficient  instrument  of 
government,  while  a  purely  democratic  Parliament  in 
which  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant  Roman  Catholics 
would  have  an  overwhelming  power,  and  which  would 
certainly  be  governed  for  some  years  by  a  statesman 
who  advocated  manhood  suffrage  and  vote  by  ballot, 
would  be  ruinous  to  property,  to  Irish  Protestantism, 
to  the  maintenance  of  order,  to  the  connection  with 
England.  Only  five  years  after  the  Union  the  Speaker 
Foster,  who  had  been  its  most  powerful  adversary,  op- 
posed Catholic  Emancipation  in  the  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment on  the  ground  that  it  was  likely  to  be  speedily 
followed  by  an  agitation  for  repeal  ;  that  a  Catholic 
and  democratic  Parliament  such  as  could  then  alone  be 
established  would  be  a  body  in  which  neither  loyalty 
nor  property  would  prevail,  and  that  seeds  of  separa- 
tion would  be  sown  in  the  struggle  which  might  lead 
to  the  complete  disruption  of  the  connection  with 
England.  In  1800  the  Orangemen  had  been  fiercely 
hostile  to  the  Union.  They  were  now  more  perfectly 
organised  in  Ulster  and  more  powerful  than  ever,  and 
they  were  prepared  to  resist  repeal  even  by  force. 
O'Connell  had  taken  great  pains  to  conciliate  them, 
but  altogether  without  success,  and  he  at  last  aban- 
doned his  efforts  as  useless. 

StiU  more  significant  was  the  attitude  of  the  more 
moderate  Irish  gentry  who  had  in  general  favoured 


IRISH  OPPOSITION  TO  REPEAL  107 

Catholic  Emancipation,  but  who  deprecated  a  repeal 
agitation  as  aiming  at  an  unattainable  object,  and  cer- 
tain to  be  in  the  highest  degree  detrimental  to  the  tran- 
quillity and  prosperity  of  Ireland.  A  paper  called  the 
Leinster  Declaration  was  signed  by  the  Duke  of  Lein- 
ster  and  by  a  long  list  of  the  leading  gentry  in  Ireland 
expressing  these  views  in  powerful  but  moderate  lan- 
guage, while  at  the  same  time  it  urged  the  Imperial 
Parliament  to  undertake  a  searching  and  immediate 
inquiry  into  the  state  of  Ireland,  and  adopt  measures 
calculated  to  ensure  her  general  and  permanent  im- 
provement. 

The  best  and  ablest  men  of  O'ConnelFs  own  persua- 
sion, including  many  who  were  ultimately  forced  into 
the  repeal  movement,  held  similar  views.  His  brother 
John  utterly  disapproved  of  the  new  agitation,  and  pre- 
dicted that  if  repeal  were  accomplished  '  separation 
must  follow,  or  what  would  be  almost  as  bad — a  con- 
stant collision  between  the  two  Parliaments,  and  as  a 
matter  of  course  a  ferment  would  be  kept  up  in  this 
unfortunate  country  which  would  preclude  any  chance 
of  employment  for  our  people  or  improvement  in  the 
country.'  ^  Thomas  Moore,  the  one  great  Catholic  man 
of  letters  modern  Ireland  has  produced,  had  once  been 
a  warm  friend  of  O'Connell.  He  was  keenly  interested 
in  the  struggle  for  Catholic  Emancipation,  and  had 
supported  it  in  many  admirable  writings  in  verse  and 
prose  ;  but  he  now  told  O'Connell  that  the  effect  of  the 
repeal  agitation  was  '  to  divide  the  ujoper  classes  and 
madden  the  lower,'  and  there  are  many  indications  that 
after  1829  he  came  to  form  a  very  low  opinion  of  the 
character  of  his  great  fellow-countryman.  By  his  lan- 
guage and  conduct  he  said  O'Connell  had  lowered  the 


*  Fitzpatrick,  i.  311. 


108      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

standard  of  public  men  in  Ireland  ;  his  vow  not  to  fight 
a  duel  would  have  been  very  respectable  if  he  had  placed 
a  decent  control  over  his  own  words  ;  but  it,  in  fact, 
only  meant  that  he  claimed  '  a  power  of  bullying  with 
impunity,'  the  very  last  thing  to  be  encouraged  in  Ire- 
land, and  he  believed  that  a  strong  personal  element 
mingled  with  and  tainted  his  patriotism.  The  beautiful 
poem  written  in  1834,  beginning  *  The  dream  of  those 
days  when  first  I  sung  thee  is  o'er,'  was  directed  against 
O'Connell  and  was  bitterly  resented  by  him/  Shell 
also  long  shrank  from  the  repeal  agitation,  and  in  pri- 
vate expressed  himself  with  much  bitterness  about 
O'Connell,  and  especially  about  the  imperiousness  with 
which  he  bore  down  all  resistance  and  disregarded  all 
advice.  '  This  man  of  the  people,'  he  is  once  reported 
to  have  said,  *  would  in  his  heart  like  to  be  the  irre- 
sponsible vizier  of  an  imbecile  autocrat.'  Much  the 
foremost  man  at  this  time  in  the  Catholic  Episcopacy 
was  Dr.  Doyle.  He  was  a  man  of  high  and  austere 
character,  of  genuine  patriotism,  and  of  great  and  com- 
manding, though  somewhat  too  declamatory,  talent. 
He  looked  upon  O'Connell's  position  and  power  with 
undisguised  alarm.  Separating  himself  from  most  of 
the  other  bishops,  he  earnestly  deprecated  a  repeal  agi- 
tation, and  he  wrote  to  Sir  H.  Parnell  in  1831,  '  Every- 
thing should  be  done  to  gain  O'Connell.'  *  I  am  con- 
vinced that  he  has  the  power  of  disturbing  the  peace 
and  totally  deranging  the  affairs  of  this  country.' 
'  Were  I  found  in  opposition  to  O'Connell,'  he  wrote, 
'  I  should  be  deserted  by  the  men  of  my  own  house- 
hold.' He  ardently  desired  to  see  O'Connell  in  office, 
for  he  did  not  believe  that  if  he  were  hostile  to  the 


I  Moore's  sentiments  about  O'Connell  appear  clearly  in  his 
Diary,  and  also  in  Willis's  Pencillings  hy  the  Way. 


LETTER  TO  THE  IRISH  PEOPLE,  1830  109 

Government  it  would  be  possible  for  England,  in  his 
lifetime,  to  govern  the  country/ 

O'Oonnell  was  not  quite  insensible  to  this  opposition, 
and  he  proceeded  cautiously  and  somewhat  tentatively. 
His  pen  was  at  this  time  nearly  as  active  as  his  voice, 
and  in  a  long  letter  to  the  people  of  Ireland,  written  in 
January  1830,  he  expanded  his  Clare  election  address, 
and  enumerated  various  objects  at  which  he  intended 
to  aim.  They  included  a  complete  reform  of  the  cor- 
porations and  the  grand  jury  system  ;  abolition  of  all 
sinecures,  and  a  reduction  of  all  salaries  (among  others 
those  of  the  judges)  which  had  been  raised  during  the 
war  on  account  of  the  depreciation  of  the  paper  cur- 
rency ;  a  long  series  of  legal  reforms  based  on  the  views  of 
Bentham,  for  whom  he  expressed  an  unbounded  ad- 
miration, and  a  radical  reform  of  Parliament.  He  did 
not  ask  for  the  disestablishment  of  the  Protestant 
Church  in  Ireland,  or  for  the  withdrawal  from  it  of  its 
churches  and  lands,  or  for  a  concurrent  endowment  of 
the  priests,  but  he  demanded  a  total  abolition  of  tithes, 
a  redistribution  of  its  remaining  income  for  the  benefit 
of  the  poorer  Protestant  clergy,  and  a  repeal  of  the 
Vestry  Act.  He  expressed  himself  decidedly  hostile  to 
a  poor  law,  but  urged  that  a  tax  of  20  per  cent,  should 
be  imposed  on  the  estates  of  absentees  and  devoted  to 
the  relief  of  distress  in  Ireland.  '  I  am  for  the  pres- 
ent,' he  added,  'silent  on  the  most  important  of  all 
topics — the  repeal  of  the  Union.  I  will  not  bring  that 
subject  before  Parliament  until  the  combined  wish  of 
the  Irish  people  shall  demand  the  repeal  in  a  voice  too 
distinct  to  be  misunderstood  and  too  formidable  to  be 
trifled  with.'  He  expressed  his  urgent  desire  that  re- 
ligious animosities  should  go  down,  and  all  classes  of 


'  Fitzpatriok's  Life  of  Doyle,  ii.  237,  249,  271,  336. 


110      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Irislimen  combine  for  this  purpose.  The  present  min- 
istry in  England  he  denounced  as  utterly  bad,  but  he 
was  resolved  to  take  an  independent  line  in  Parliament, 
and  not  to  become  a  member  of  the  regular  Opposition.^ 
In  another  letter,  written  about  the  same  time,  to  the 
Irish  Protestants,  he  implored  them  to  join  with  the 
Catholics;  urged  that  a  domestic  Parliament  alone  could 
sufficiently  attend  to  the  local  needs  of  Ireland,  and 
disclaimed  in  the  strongest  terms  the  wish  for  any 
Catholic  ascendency.'  He  desired,  he  wrote  to  Fitz- 
patrick,  *  no  social  revolution,  no  social  change. '  He 
would  leave  the  clergy  for  their  lives  their  full  incomes. 
He  wished  the  Irish  nobility  to  retain  all  the  privileges 
they  possessed  before  the  Union,  and  the  resident  gen- 
try all  their  present  state.  The  only  exceptional  tax  he 
contemplated  was  an  absentee  tax,  and  this  he  consid- 
ered essential  to  the  prosperity  of  Ireland.' 

He  continually  in  his  speeches  put  forward  the  ques- 
tion of  repeal,  and  among  the  populace  at  least  it  was 
eagerly  responded  to.  There  was  no  genuine  enthusi- 
asm about  municipal  or  legal  or  grand  jury  reforms, 
but  cheers  for  the  repeal  of  the  Union  greeted  him  con- 
tinually. The  capital  question  in  his  eyes  was  whether 
he  could  carry  the  priesthood  with  him.  During  the 
struggle  for  emancipation  public  meetings  were  con- 
stantly held  in  the  chapels,  though  in  the  diocese  of 
Dublin  Archbishop  Murray  had  prohibited  them  in  the 
churches  which  were  under  his  control."  It  was  as- 
sumed that  meetings  for  Catholic  enfranchisement  had 
at  least  a  semi-religious  character,  but  when  this  object 


^  Pagan's  Life  of  O'Connell,  lin  in    the    Clarendon    Street 

ii.  24-30.  Chapel,  which  belonged  to  the 

'  Ibid.  ii.  23.  Carmelite  friars  and  was  not 

'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  326.  controlled  by  the  Archbishop. 
*  Meetings  were  held  in  Dub- 


NEW  ASSOCIATIONS  SUPPRESSED  HI 

was  attained  a  rescript  from  Rome  absolutely  forbade 
the  use  of  chapels  for  political  meetings/  O'Con- 
nell,  however,  soon  convinced  himself  that  he  could 
win  the  priesthood,  and  either  from  policy  or  perhaps 
more  probably  from  his  own  very  sanguine  disposi- 
tion, he  constantly  in  his  private  letters  spoke  as  if 
the  Irish  people  were  irresistibly  bent  upon  repeal, 
and  as  if  its  achievement  was  not  only  practicable,  but 
certain. 

He  was  very  anxious  to  establish  associations  like 
those  by  which  he  had  organised  the  Catholic  move- 
ment, but  the  power  which  the  new  law  had  given  to 
the  Lord  Lieutenant  proved  an  insuperable  obstacle. 
He  first  established  '  a  Society  for  the  Friends  of  Ire- 
land,' which  proposed  to  draw  Irishmen  of  all  creeds 
together  for  the  redress  of  local  grievances,  but  also  for 
the  repeal  of  the  Union.  It  was  suppressed  after  a  few 
weeks  by  proclamation.  Then  came  in  succession  an 
*  Anti-Union  Association,'  and  an  association  of  *  Irish 
Volunteers  for  the  Repeal  of  the  Union,'  both  of  which 
were  immediately  proclaimed.  O'Connell  next  devised 
a  series  of  w^eekly  public  breakfasts,  where  public  ques- 
tions were  discussed,  and  as  it  was  difficult  to  bring 
these  under  the  new  law,  they  continued  for  some  time 
unmolested. 

These  earlier  proclamations  took  place  under  the 
Viceroyalty  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  and 
O'Connell  denounced  them  Avith  great  vehemence,  mak- 
ing the  two  successive  Chief  Secretaries,  Lord  Francis 
L.  Cower  and  Sir  Henry  Hardinge,  specially  responsi- 
ble. His  attack  on  Lord  F.  Cower  is  redeemed  from 
oblivion  by  a  happy  image  which  delighted  the  House  of 
Commons.     He  pointed  out  how  it  had  become  almost  a 


'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  230,  347;  Fagan,  ii.  278. 


112      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

system  to  entrust  tlie  management  of  Irish  affairs  to 
perfectly  inexperienced  young  politicians  who  had  still 
to  learn  the  lesson  of  statesmanship,  and  he  compared 
this  to  the  practice  which  he  said  existed  among  bar- 
bers of  teaching  their  apprentices  by  making  them  shave 
beggars.  The  '  shave-beggar '  secretaries  were  long 
spoken  of  in  Ireland.  He  denounced  Sir  II.  Ilardinge 
in  a  strain  of  gross  and  empty  scurrility,  and  threw  out 
grave  imputations  on  his  military  capacity.  The  old 
soldier  at  once  sent  him  a  challenge,  but  O'Connell, 
while  disclaiming  some  of  the  more  oSensive  expres- 
sions attributed  to  him,  refused  to  accept  it. 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  it  would  be  difficult  to 
conceive  anything  more  purely  despotic  than  the  power 
which  was  at  this  time  vested  in  the  Lord  Lieutenant 
of  suppressing  at  will  any  political  association,  even 
though  there  was  not  the  smallest  evidence  that  it  was 
intended  to  excite  to  any  breach  of  the  law,  to  attack 
property  or  to  injure  or  molest  individuals.  It  was 
justified  by  the  belief  that  it  was  of  vital  im2-)ortance  to 
the  peace  and  prosperity  of  Ireland  that  it  should  not 
be  convulsed  by  another  great  agitation,  and  also  that 
the  repeal  of  the  Union  was  in  itself  so  inconsistent 
with  the  integrity  of  the  Empire  as  to  justify  the  em- 
ployment of  all  the  resources  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Government  to  prevent  it.  This  was  asserted  from  the 
very  first  in  the  most  unequivocal  language  by  Peel  as 
the  representative  of  the  Tories,  and  not  less  emj^ihati- 
cally  by  Gre}^,  who,  as  the  Whig  leader,  was  soon  to 
rise  in  power,  and  who  had  himself  been  in  1800  one 
of  the  strongest  opponents  of  the  Union. 

Lord  Anglesey  had  been  Lord  Lieutenant  in  the 
most  critical  period  of  the  struggle  for  emancipation, 
and  it  was  chiefly  in  consequence  of  his  too  evident 
sympathy  with  the  Catholic  cause  that  he  was  recalled 


LORD  ANGLESEY,  VICEROY  113 

in  1829.  He  was  at  that  time  exceedingly  popular  in 
Ireland  and  on  excellent  terms  with  O'Connell.  In 
December  1830,  when  the  Whigs  under  Lord  G-rey 
came  to  power,  he  was  again  sent  to  Ireland,  accom- 
panied by  a  Chief  Secretary  who,  though  like  most  of 
his  predecessors  young  and  inexperienced,  possessed 
abilities  which  it  was  impossible  for  O'Connell  to  de- 
spise. This  was  Mr.  Stanley,  afterwards  Lord  Derby 
and  Prime  Minister  of  England.  In  him  O'Connell 
found  a  life-long  opponent,  who,  with  indomitable 
courage  and  a  fierce  and  somewhat  arrogant  temper, 
combined  debating  powers  that  have  scarcely  been 
equalled  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Lord  Anglesey 
before  going  to  Ireland  had  an  interview  with  O'Con- 
nell, and  attempted  to  dissuade  him  from  agitation, 
and  to  induce  him  to  devote  himself  to  the  measures  of 
practical  reform  which  the  Whigs  were  quite  ready  to 
undertake.  He  totally  failed,  and  came  away  with  the 
conviction  that  O'Connell  was  '  bent  upon  desperate 
agitation,'  and  that  the  question  would  soon  be  whether 
the  Viceroy  or  O'Connell  would  govern  Ireland.  Noth- 
ing, O'Connell  declared,  would  induce  him  to  postpone 
a  repeal  agitation,  and  he  tried  to  justify  himself  on 
the  ground  that  the  only  way  of  keeping  the  country 
from  rebellion  was  to  give  full  scope  to  constitutional 
agitation. 

'  Lord  Anglesey,  and  those  by  whom  he  was  sur- 
rounded,' he  wrote  to  one  who  remonstrated  with  him, 
'  know  nothing  of  Ireland.  I  now  tell  you  for  a  cer- 
tainty that  nothing  but  the  effect  of  my  advice  and  in- 
fluence keeps  the  people  from  a  violent  course.  They 
all  know  that  it  is  my  decided  conviction  that  they 
should  not  have  recourse  to  force,  and  that  I  will  for- 
sake them  if  they  resort  to  violence.  But  for  this  you 
would  have  already  a  speedy  but  of  course  a  sanguinary 

VOL.  II.  8 


114      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

revolution.' '  Through  O'Connell's  influence  Lord 
Anglesey  was  received  in  Dublin  with  the  most  morti- 
fying coldness,  while  O'Connell  himself  on  his  arrival 
was  welcomed  with  almost  royal  enthusiasm.  The  new 
ministry  was  quite  as  determined  as  that  which  pre- 
ceded it  to  use  every  means  to  put  down  the  repeal 
agitation.  The  public  breakfasts,  though  they  now 
professed  to  be  for  charitable  purposes,  were  put  down. 
The  same  fate  attended  other  attempts  at  association, 
and  O'Connell  himself  was  prosecuted  for  an  attempt 
to  evade  the  King's  proclamation  under  the  recent  Act, 
and  also  for  conspiracy  under  the  common  law.  With 
the  consent  of  the  Government  the  latter  charge  was 
withdrawn,  and  O'Connell,  after  some  vacillation, 
pleaded  guilty  to  the  former.  He  was  never  called  up 
for  judgment,  and  the  Act  which  he  had  broken  soon 
after  expired.  It  was  in  the  course  of  this  struggle 
that  he  retaliated  by  formally  recommending  that  run 
upon  gold  which  he  had  suggested  in  the  preceding 
year. 

One  form  of  supj^ort,  however,  came  to  him  in  abun- 
dant measure.  We  have  already  seen  how  successful 
had  been  the  effort  to  raise  a  large  revenue  during  the 
latter  phases  of  the  struggle  for  emancipation.  When 
this  end  was  achieved,  a  subscription  was  at  once  started 
through  the  whole  of  Ireland  for  raising  a  testimonial 
to  O'Connell,  and  a  sum  of  no  less  than  50,000Z.  was 
collected.^  It  was  soon  followed  by  a  proposal  for  a 
regular  annual  tribute,  which  was  to  be  placed  directly 
and  unreservedly  in  his  hands.  The  priests  supported 
the  movement  and  took  a  leading  part  in  its  collection, 
and  its  success  during  many  years  was  an  extraordinary 
proof  of  his  wonderful  popularity.     It  usually  touched. 


»  Fitzpatrick,  i.  237.  '  Fagan,  1.  642;  ii.  66-69. 


THE  O'CONNELL  TRIBUTE  115 

and  sometimes  exceeded^  15,000?.  a  year.  It  is  stated 
on  the  authority  of  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  fund  that 
between  1829  and  1834  not  less  than  91,800?.  was  col- 
lected/ 

The  O'Connell  tribute  was  a  constant  subject  of 
taunts  both  in  England  and  in  Ireland,  and  when  all 
due  allowance  is  made  for  the  expense  of  the  collection, 
it  must  be  acknowledged  that  O'Connell  had  made  the 
profession  of  political  agitator  the  most  lucrative  in 
Ireland.  He  does  not  appear  himself  to  have  suggested 
the  tribute,  but  he  took  the  keenest  interest  in  it  and 
gave  minute  directions  about  its  organisation.  Its  plan 
was  much  the  same  as  the  earlier  Catholic  rent — a  small 
weekly  contribution  to  be  levied  from  each  Catholic  in 
every  parish,  collected  on  Sundays  under  the  direction 
of  the  priests.' 

He  has  himself  defended  it  both  in  Parliament  and 
in  his  published  letter  to  Lord  Shrewsbury.  He  said  that 
for  twenty  years  before  emancipation,  and  even  at  the 
time  when  the  calls  of  his  profession  were  very  great, 
there  was  no  day  in  which  he  did  not  gratuitously  de- 
vote from  one  to  two  hours,  and  often  much  more,  to 
the  working  out  of  the  Catholic  cause  ;  that  for  four 
years  he  bore  the  entire  expenses  of  the  Catholic  agita- 
tion without  receiving  contributions  from  others  of 
more  than  74/.  in  the  whole  ;  that  since  emancipation 
he  had  almost  abandoned  his  practice  at  the  Bar,  and 
that  in  the  year  before  emancipation  his  professional 
income  had  been  no  less  than  8,000/.,  and  wouhl  prob- 
ably have  increased.  He  dilated  in  a  strain  of  which 
he  was  very  fond,  but  which  Grattan  certainly  would 
not  have  used,  on  his  great  sacrifices  to  his  country  : 
*  Who  shall  repay  me  for  the  years  of  my  buoyant  youth 


'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  212.  «  See  Fitzpatrick,  i.  211-212. 


116      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

and  cheerful  manhood  ?  Who  shall  repay  me  for  the 
lost  opportunities  of  acquiring  professional  celebrity 
and  for  the  wealth  which  such  distinctions  would  en- 
sure ? ' ' 

There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  these  great 
tributes,  levied  over  a  very  wide  area  and  chiefly  drawn 
from  the  poorest  class,  were  most  powerful  political 
agencies  in  binding  together  in  one  great  organisation 
the  masses  of  the  people,  inspiring  them  with  an  in- 
tense enthusiasm  and  a  common  interest  in  the  cause. 
They  formed  a  kind  of  political  thermometer,  accurately 
marking  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  popular  feeling.  They 
made  O'Connell  altogether  independent  of  the  Govern- 
ment, as  no  post  it  could  give  him  would  be  as  lucrative 
as  his  tribute,  and  they  enabled  him  to  bear  the  heavy 
costs  of  a  party  leader.  Emancipation,  by  opening 
Parliament  to  Catholics,  had  immensely  increased  these 
costs,  and  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  O'Connell  tribute 
appears  to  have  been  devoted  to  election  expenses. 

This  was  not,  it  is  true,  altogether  disinterested  ex- 
penditure, for  one  of  the  first  uses  he  made  of  his  popu- 
larity was  to  bring  as  many  members  of  his  family  as 
possible  into  Parliament.  In  his  desire  to  push  forward 
his  family  in  public  life,  though  perhaps  in  nothing 
else,  he  strongly  resembled  Cromwell.  In  the  first  re- 
formed Parliament  there  was,  as  he  boasted,  a  family 
party  of  eight,  consisting  of  three  of  his  sons,  two  of 
his  sons-in-law,  his  brother,  his  first  cousin  and  him- 
self. There  were  at  the  same  time  about  forty  other 
repeal  members.'  In  this  Parliament  he  exchanged  his 
safe  seat  for  Kerry  for  a  very  expensive  and  precarious 
one  in  Dublin,  from  which  he  was  ejected  in  1836  on 
petition.     O'Connell  stated  that  this  petition  was  likely 


*  Letter  to  Lord  Shrewshmj,  p.  67.        ^  Fagan,  ii.  209-210. 


O'CONNELL'S  PRIVATE  MEANS  117 

to  cost  him  at  least  8,000/.,  and  that  in  addition  to  it 
he  had  four  other  petitions  against  members  of  his 
family  to  defend,  and  had  also  to  bear  the  cost  of  five 
contested  elections.'  A  special  subscription  was  got  up 
by  the  English  Eadicals  under  the  auspices  of  Joseph 
Hume  to  defray  these  expenses,  but  it  was  not  consid- 
ered a  success,  as  it  only  produced  between  8,000Z.  and 
9,000/.'  There  were  after  the  elections  of  1835  no  less 
than  thirteen  petitions  against  repeal  members,  and 
numerous  seats  were  for  the  first  time  attacked.  In 
addition  to  election  expenses,  O'Connell  subscribed 
largely  to  a  crowd  of  Catholic  charities  and  enterprises. 
He  was  always  eager  about  getting  money,  but  always 
lavish  and  generous  in  expending  it,  and  the  fact  that 
he  left  only  a  very  moderate  fortune  when  he  died 
shows  that  the  great  sums  that  he  received  were  at  least 
not  hoarded. 

He  was  himself  a  man  of  large  private  means,  and 
with  his  great  professional  income  he  ought  to  have 
been  a  wealthy  man  if  he  had  never  taken  to  politics. 
His  own  patrimonial  estate,  it  is  true,  was  very  small; 
but  he  had  been  adopted  by  his  rich  bachelor  uncle 
Maurice,  and  he  inherited  from  him,  in  1825,  Darry- 
nane  and  a  landed  estate  which  is  said  to  have  produced 
at  the  lowest  estimate  4,000/.  a  year,  and  he  afterwards 
inherited  a  considerable  amount  of  personal  property 
from  another  uncle.  Count  O'Connell.  But  he  had  an 
enormous  family — nine  children,  twenty-one  uncles  and 
aunts,  seven  married  sisters' — and  during  the  few 
months  of  his  holiday  at  Darrynane  he  loved  to  keep 
open  house.  His  table  was  often  laid  for  thirty  guests, 
and  his  hospitality  was  constantly  shown,  not  only  to 
his  numerous  relatives,  friends,  and  partisans,  but  often 


» Fitzpatrick,  ii.  54.     '  Fagan,ii.  537-539.      '  Ibid.  11.  183. 


118       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

to  mere  passing  travellers,  who  sometimes  greatly  abused 
it.  Nearly  all  his  life  he  seems  to  have  been  in  debt. 
This  was  partly,  it  is  said,  due  to  his  having  stood 
surety  to  a  friend,  but  it  is  evident  that  the  incurable 
extravagance  and  thriftlessness  so  common  among  his 
countrymen  lay  deep  in  his  nature.  His  brother  James, 
who  was  a  shrewd  and  cynical  judge,  said  that  he  was 
only  old  enough  to  remember  his  brother  from  the  age 
of  fourteen,  but  from  that  time  he  never  knew  him  not 
in  want  of  money.  ^  I  do  not  think  that  the  common 
charge  in  England,  that  he  was  merely  a  '  big  beggar- 
man,'  who  took  up  politics  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
money,  is  true.  He  was  in  my  judgment  a  man  capa- 
ble of  passionate  convictions  and  of  an  ambition  far 
outsoaring  mere  pecuniary  considerations,  and  I  should 
much  rather  accept  the  verdict  of  Greville,  who,  calmly 
reviewing  O'Connell's  career  after  his  death,  wrote: 
'  His  dependence  on  his  country's  bounty  in  the  rent 
that  was  levied  for  so  many  years  was  alike  honourable 
to  the  contributors  and  the  recipient.  It  was  an  in- 
come nobly  given  and  nobly  earned.'  At  the  same 
time  those  who  follow  his  confidential  correspondence 
can  hardly  fail  to  be  painfully  struck  with  a  greed  and 
anxiety  about  money  matters  which  runs  through  it, 
especially  in  periods  when  agitation  had  flagged  and  the 
tribute  accordingly  diminished. 

As  the  period  of  the  great  English  Reform  Bill  ap- 
proached, O'Connell,  with  the  keen  insight  into  the 
needs  and  opportunities  of  the  moment  which  never 
abandoned  him,  silently  dropped  repeal  and  devoted  all 
his  energies  to  pushing  on  the  reform  cause,  and  en- 
deavouring to  give  it  a  strongly  marked  democratic 
character.     In  1830  he  introduced  a  Bill  for  vote  by 


*  Duffy's  Four  Years  of  Irish  History,  p.  399. 


SERVICES   DURING  THE  REFORM  STRUGGLE     119 

ballot;,  triennial  Parliaments,  and  universal  suffrage, 
but  he  only  found  thirteen  supporters.  During  the 
struggle  of  the  Reform  Bill  his  services  to  the  Whigs 
were  very  considerable,  and  they  were  probably  the 
true  reason  why  the  prosecution  against  him  was  aban- 
doned. He  even  claimed  the  merit  of  carrying  the 
Bill,  and  it  is  quite  true  that  his  followers  turned  the 
closely  balanced  scale  on  the  second  reading  in  1831, 
a  majority  both  of  the  English  and  of  the  Scotch  mem- 
bers having  voted  against  it.  He  spoke  with  great 
power  in  its  favour  both  in  Parliament  and  in  public 
meetings;  he  wrote  letters  in  defence  of  it,  and  he  ren- 
dered a  still  greater  service  by  keeping  Ireland  quiet 
during  the  wild  excitement  of  the  dissolution  of  1831. 
If  anything  resembling  an  insurrection  had  at  this  time 
broken  out  in  Ireland,  or  even  if  the  repeal  question 
had  been  very  prominent,  it  would  have  seriously  em- 
barrassed the  English  reformers. 

Lord  Russell  relates  that  he  was  standing  at  the  bar 
of  the  House  of  Lords  when  the  King  announced  this 
memorable  dissolution.  Lord  Lyndhurst  came  up  to 
him  and  said,  *  Have  you  considered  the  state  of  Ire- 
land ?  do  not  you  expect  an  insurrection  ?  '  or  words  to 
that  effect.  '  It  so  happened,'  continues  Lord  Russell, 
^  that  in  going  into  the  House  of  Commons  I  had  met 
O'Connell  in  the  lobby.  I  asked  him,  "Will  Ireland 
be  quiet  during  the  General  Election?"  and  he  an- 
swered me,  "  Perfectly  quiet."  He  did  not  answer  for 
more  than  he  was  able  to  perform.'  ^  Under  the  influ- 
ence of  O'Connell  the  question  of  repeal  at  this  election 
was  almost  wholly  put  aside;  support  of  O'Connell,  in- 
cluding support  of  parliamentary  reform,  was  made  the 
sole  test.     It  appeared  as  if  a  real  alliance  was  being 


^  Recollections,  p.  76. 


120      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

formed  between  O'Connell  and  the  Whig  Government, 
and  there  was  already  some  question  about  giving  to 
O'Connell  the  important  office  of  Irish  Attorney- 
General/ 

His  relations,  however,  with  the  Government  of 
Lord  Grey  soon  became  very  troubled.  Some  of  the 
new  ministers  were  fully  prepared  to  ally  themselves 
with  him,  and  Lord  Duncannon,  who  was  now  at  the 
Woods  and  Forests,  was  during  almost  the  whole  of  his 
life  on  terms  of  warm  friendship  with  O'Connell.  But 
of  all  the  Chief  Secretaries  of  Ireland — not  even  ex- 
cepting Peel — Stanley  appears  to  have  been  the  most 
obnoxious  to  O'Connell,  and  he  assured  Lord  Duncan- 
non that  *  Stanley  must  leave  Ireland  or  the  ministry 
must  expect  to  lose  the  support  of  the  Irish  members. ' 
The  severity  with  which  the  proclamations  against  asso- 
ciations and  meetings  were  put  in  force;  the  employ- 
ment of  a  very  undisciplined  yeomanry,  largely  recruited 
from  extreme  Protestants  of  the  north,  to  enforce  the 
collection  of  tithes;  the  outspoken,  uncompromising 
language  of  Stanley  in  defence  of  tithes  and  the  Vestry 
law  and  the  Sub-letting  Act;  as  well  as  the  manner  in 
which  the  patronage  of  Ireland  was  administered  and 
the  most  important  officials  of  the  late  Government 
maintained  in  power,  exasperated  him  to  the  highest 
degree.  In  his  letters  to  Lord  Duncannon  he  declared 
that  '  Lord  Anglesey  and  Mr.  Stanley  have  made  the 

^  He  writes,  October  5.  1831,  cept  office  at  this  time.     He 

to  his  friend  Barrett:  ^Strictly,  says,  'My  ap[)licatiou  to  him 

strictly  private  and  most  con-  was  more  successful  than  I  an- 

fidential.    I  could  be  Attorney-  ticipated,  but  finding  how  iso- 

General  —  and    in    one   hour.'  lated  the  proposal  of  office  was 

Fitzpatrick,  i.  275.     It  appears  made  to  him  I  fully  agreed  with 

from  a  letter  of  Bishop  Doyle  to  him  that  it  should  be  rejected.' 

Sir  H.  Parnell  that  the  Bishop  Ibid.  p.  286.     See  too  on  these 

exercised    his    influence    with  negotiations  Torrens's  Life  of 

O'Connell  to  induce  him  to  ac-  Melbourne,  i.  394,  395. 


HOSTILITY  OF  GREY  121 

people  of  Ireland  Kepealers.  They  will,  if  they  remain, 
make  them  Separatists.  In  six  months  the  connection 
between  the  two  countries  will  have  to  be  maintained 
by  armed  force  unless  they  are  removed.'  So  angry 
was  he  that  for  some  time  he,  with  a  number  of  his  col- 
leagues, refused  to  go  over  to  London  to  support  the 
Government  in  the  division  lobby,  and  he  declared  that 
he  was  forming  a  separate  party — a  party  without  re- 
ligious distinctions — to  suj^port  Irish  interests,  as 
neither  the  Whigs  nor  the  Tories  would  do  so.  The 
removal  of  Blackburne,  a  lawyer  of  great  ability  and 
determination  and  of  strong  anti-Catholic  sympathies, 
who  had  been  Attorney-General  under  the  preceding 
ministry^  and  who  had  instituted  the  prosecution  of 
O'Connell,  was  his  first  condition  of  support,  and  he 
desired  also  the  removal  of  a  number  of  Tory  magis- 
trates, and  apparently  even  of  lord  lieutenants  of  coun- 
ties. ^  If  such  changes  were  made,  he  clearly  intimated 
that  he  was  ready  to  defend  the  Government. 

As  long  as  Lord  Grey  remained  at  the  head  of  affairs 
nothing  of  this  kind  was  done.  Grey  had  formed  the 
worst  possible  opinion  of  O'Connell,^  and  steadily  op- 

*  See  his  letters  to  Lord  Dun-  his  support  they  make  no  im- 

cannon,  Fitzpatrick,  i.  277-285.  proper  concessions  to  obtain  it 

'Lord  Campbell  speaks  of  I  have  no  objections  to  make. 
Grey's  *  childish  dislike  to  But  how  long  can  such  a  state 
O'Connell,'  Lift,  ii.  49 ;  but  per-  of  things  endure  ? .  .  .  My  own 
haps  the  strongest  expression  of  course  with  respect  to  this  point 
his  feelings  is  in  one  of  Grey's  is  clear.  I  never  have  had  and 
letters  to  the  Princess  Lieven  never  will  have  any  coramuni- 
in  February  183G.  He  predicts  cation  with  a  man  whose  con- 
that  the  greatest  dilliculty  of  duct  has  been,  beyond  any  ex- 
the  Melbourne  Ministry  '  will  ample  except  that  of  the  worst 
arise  from  their  position  with  men  at  the  beginning  of  the 
respect  to  O'Connell,'  and  he  French  Revolution,  unprin- 
proceeds,  '  You  know  my  opin-  cipled  and  brutal.  EUice  and 
ion  with  respect  to  that  unprin-  I  have  had  many  battles  on  this 
cipled  ruffian.  As  long  as  it  subject,  and  I  am  afraid  he  does 
can  be  said  that  in  accepting  not  see  even  now  the  impolicy 


122      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

posed  any  compromise  with  him.  The  Irish  Reform 
Bill  was  also  a  bitter  disappointment.  It  added,  it  is 
true,  five  to  the  number  of  Irish  representatives  settled 
at  the  Union,  but  O'Connell  maintained  that  with  a 
population  of  nearly  eight  millions  Ireland  was  entitled 
to  thirty  additional  county  members,  and  in  all  to  not 
less  than  seventy- three  additional  members.^  It  opened 
sixteen  nomination  boroughs  and  enlarged  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  great  towns,  but  the  Government  re- 
fused to  democratise  the  electorate  by  restoring  the  40s. 
franchise  in  the  agricultural  districts,  and  they  abol- 
ished that  franchise  where  it  still  existed  in  the  towns, 
making  the  10/.  franchise  the  general  rule.  Had  they 
acted  otherwise  they  would  have  made  O'Connell  abso- 
lute master  of  the  electorate,  and  both  parties  in  the 
State  at  that  time  clearly  saw  that  it  was  only  by  main- 
taining a  high  suffrage  that  parliamentary  government 
could  be  made  to  work  in  Ireland.  In  a  series  of 
powerful  but  very  angry  letters  addressed  *  to  the  Re- 
formers of  Great  Britain'  O'Connell  compared  and 
contrasted  in  great  detail  the  British  and  the  Irish  Re- 
form Bills,  maintaining  that  the  opening  of  the  repre- 
sentation of  Dublin,  Belfast,  Cork,  and  Galway  was  the 
only  real  benefit  likely  to  follow  from  the  Act,  and  that 
it  was  on  the  whole  positively  adverse  to  the  right  and 
power  of  the  people  to  choose  representatives.  He  con- 
tended that  it  would  diminish  instead  of  increasing  the 
number  of  voters;  that  it  would  aggravate  instead  of 
diminishing  the  differences  between  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland;  that  the  abolition  of  the  4:0s.  franchise  and 

— might  I  not  add  the  disgrace?  his  own  sordid  interest  or  dis- 
— of  even  the  slightest  advance  honest  ambition. '  Correspond- 
to  conciliate  (which  by  the  way  ence  of  Princess  Lieven  and 
is  impossible)  the  leader  of  a  Earl  Grey,  iii.  184. 
party  whose  views  have  no  ^  Letter  to  Lord  Shrewsbury, 
direction  but  to  the  objects  of  p.  141. 


THE  IRISH  REPRESENTATION  123 

the  freeman  franchise  in  the  towns  and  the  costly  and 
complicated  Irish  system  of  registration  would  more 
than  counterbalance  any  benefits  it  might  produce.  As 
soon  as  the  Reform  Bill  was  carried  the  repeal  agitation 
revived. 

A  few  words  may  here  be  said  about  the  character 
of  the  Irish  representation.  It  had  changed  greatly 
after  Catholic  Emancipation  and  the  Reform  Bill,  and 
it  had  not  changed  for  the  better.  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact  that  in  spite  of  the  great  diminution  of  small  and 
venal  boroughs  that  was  a  consequence  of  the  Union, 
aristocratic  control  in  the  Irish  representation  during 
the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
even  stronger  than  in  England.'  The  vast  majority  of 
the  constituencies  were  in  the  hands  of  a  few  great 
families,  who  either  contested  or  arranged  the  repre- 
sentation, and  most  of  the  members  were  men  of  good 
birth  and  considerable  property.  The  spirit  of  politi- 
cal jobbery  which  was  so  inveterate  in  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment was  certainly  not  extinct  among  them,  but  they 
were  on  the  whole  a  highly  respectable  class,  who  took 
their  places  unobtrusively  in  the  different  English  par- 
ties, and  who  did  nothing  to  disturb  the  character  or 
lower  the  staudard  of  parliamentary  life.  Among  the 
Irish  members  of  this  period,  Grattan,  Plunket,  Foster, 
Ponsonby,  Newport,  Henry  Parnell,  and  Croker  were 
all  men  of  conspicuous  weight  and  ability. 

In  two  respects  they  gave  a  distinct  bias  to  Parlia- 
ment. The  Irish  members  were  strong,  though  not 
altogether  unwavering,  supporters  of  the  abolition  of 
the  slave  trade,  and  the  Union  was  in  consequence  very 
favourable  to  that  great  cause.'     The  large  majority  of 

'See    May's    Constitutional      177,  212.     Clarkson's  History 
History,  i,  304-305.  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave 

« Wilberforce's  Life,  iii.  168,       Trade,  ii.  490,„491,  499,  503. 


124      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

them  also,  as  well  as  the  leading  Irish  Protestant  fami- 
lies, were  in  favour  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  though, 
like  Grattan,  they  wished  it  to  be  accompanied  by  the 
veto  and  by  the  payment  of  the  priests.  If  the  Catho- 
lic concession  had  been  introduced  by  Pitt  when  the 
Union  was  carried,  it  was  computed  by  the  best  Gov- 
ernment authorities  that  at  least  64  out  of  the  100  Irish 
members  would  have  supported  it,  and  that,  in  spite 
of  the  Orange  movement  and  the  passions  aroused  by 
the  rebellion,  it  would  have  been  generally  accepted  by 
Irish  Protestant  opinion.' 

There  is  a  very  striking  prediction  of  Peel  that  the 
introduction  of  Catholic  members  would  bring  a  totally 
different  element  into  the  Irish  representation,  and 
that  if,  as  he  anticipated,  the  Irish  Catholic  members 
remained  a  distinct  body  with  '  separate  interests  and 
separate  views,'  they  would  disturb  the  whole  working 
of  parliamentary  government.  '  The  parliamentary 
business,'  he  wrote, '  would  be  impeded  by  the  addition 
to  the  House  of  Commons  of  50  or  60  members,  whose 
only  chance  of  maintaining  their  influence  would  be 
unremitting  attendance  in  the  House  and  violent  and 
vexatious  opposition  to  the  progress  of  public  busi- 
ness.' '■' 

The  opposition  between  O'Connell  and  the  aristo- 
cratic element  in  the  Catholic  body  and  the  strongly 


^  See  my  History  of  Ireland,  property  in  Protestant  hands, 

V.  450-451.  he  believed  that  forty  was  the 

''Peel's  Memoirs,  i.  291.     It  utmost  number  they  could  ob- 

isworthyof  notice  that  Grattan,  tain.     Speeches,  iv.  335.    The 

who  always  refused  to  recognise  probable  result  of  his  Bill,  he 

representation    divorced   from  thought,  would  be  that  '  seven 

property,     believed    that    the  or  eight  noblemen  would  come 

Catholics  would  be   a  perma-  into  the  House  of   Peers  and 

nent  minority  in  the  Irish  rep-  perhaps  ten  or  twenty  members 

resentation.      Considering  the  into  the  House  of  Commons.' 

overwhelming  amount  of  Irish  Ibid.  p.  404. 


O'CONNELL'S  'TAIL'  125 

democratic  type  of  politics  which  O'Connell  had  adopted 
had  alienated  and  alarmed  many,  though  even  at  the 
last  stage  of  the  struggle  in  1828  a  clear  majority  of 
the  Irish  Protestant  members  were  in  favour  of  conces- 
sion. But  it  soon  became  an  object  with  O'Connell  to 
displace  the  old  representatives  by  men  who  were  abso- 
lutely subservient  to  himself,  and  the  imposition  of  a 
repeal  test  very  effectually  carried  out  this  object. 
O'Connell's  '  Tail/  as  it  was  always  called,  became  con- 
siderable in  the  first  reformed  Parliament,  but  it  never 
comprised  the  whole  body  of  Irish  Liberal  representa- 
tives. There  was  always  a  Whig  element  of  some 
power,  and  even  among  those  who  had  a  general  sym- 
pathy with  O'Connell's  objects  there  were  a  few  men 
of  high  character,  such  as  Sharman  Crawford  and 
Smith  O'Brien,  who  were  certainly  not  blind  followers. 
*  The  Tail '  consisted  largely  of  members  of  his  own 
numerous  family  and  connections,  and  its  other  mem- 
bers belonged  in  general  to  a  lower  social  stratum  than 
their  predecessors,  and,  with  very  few  exceptions,  they 
were  but  little  respected  either  for  their  characters  or 
abilities.*  Shell  was  the  only  man  of  conspicuous  tal- 
ent among  them,  and  his  allegiance  was  of  brief  dura- 
tion and  of  a  somewhat  doubtfal  nature. 

The  followers  of  O'Connell  gladly  availed  them- 
selves of  all  periods  when  he  was  in  alliance  with  the 
Government  to  accept  office  under  the  Crown;  but  in 
the  debates  on  the  Coercion  Bills  and  on  the  Arms  Bill 
of  1843  they  were  very  prominent,  and  tactics  with 
which  in  our  own  day  we  have  become  very  familiar 
could  be  already  detected.     The  '  Tail '  combined  with 


*  Many    interesting    partic-  Bill  will  be  found  in  Maddyn's 

ulars  about  the  Irish  represen-  Ireland  and  her  Rulers,  i.  230 

tation  before  Catholic  Eman-  -250. 
cipation  and  after  the  Reform 


126      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

English  Radicals  in  an  opposition  so  obstructive  and  so 
pertinacious,  that  it  showed,  in  the  words  of  Lord  Pal- 
merston,  '  that  a  compact  body  of  opponents,  though 
few  in  numbers,  may,  by  debating  every  sentence  and 
word  of  a  Bill  and  by  dividing  upon  every  debate,  so 
obstruct  its  progress  through  Parliament,  that  a  whole 
session  may  be  scarcely  long  enough  for  carrying  through 
one  measure.' '  In  a  memorandum  drawn  up  by  Peel 
in  1846  there  is  a  curious  passage  on  this  subject:  he 
speaks  of  the  difficulty  of  carrying  legislation  in  the 
face  of  '  opponents  consuming  the  public  time  in 
speeches  of  two  or  three  hours  each,  made  solely  for 
the  purpose  of  delay.'  'It  may  be  said,'  he  adds, 
*  public  indignation  will  coerce  the  Irish  members  into 
decent  conduct  and  into  observance  of  the  usages  of 
debate.  Do  not  trust  to  this.  There  is  an  Irish  party 
— a  determined  and  not  insignificant  one — for  which 
British  indignation  has  no  terrors.  Their  wish  is  to 
disgust  England  with  Irish  business  and  with  Irish 
members,  and  to  induce  England,  through  sheer  dis- 
gust, and  the  sense  of  public  inconvenience  from  the 
obstruction  opposed  to  the  progress  of  all  other  busi- 
ness in  Parliament,  to  listen  to  a  repeal  of  the  Legis- 
lative Union  for  the  purpose  of  purging  the  House 
of  a  set  of  troublesome  and  factious  members  who 
equally  obstruct  legislation  for  Ireland  and  for  Great 
Britain." 

The  most  important  measure  of  the  Grey  Ministry 
was  the  foundation  of  the  existing  system  of  national 
education.  It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  its  im- 
portance, or  the  need  which  it  attempted  to  supply. 
Perhaps  the  worst  part  of  the  penal  laws  had  been  the 


'  Ashley's  Life  of  Palmerston,  i.  464. 
'  Peel's  Memoirs,  ii.  290-291. 


THE  KILDARE  STREET  SOCIETY        127 

provisions  which  shut  the  Catholics  out  from  all  the 
means  of  education,  and  the  Charter  Schools  of  Arch- 
bishop Boulter,  as  we  have  seen,  were  distinctly  prose- 
lytising. The  ^  Kildare  Street  Society,'  which  received 
an  endowment  from  Government,  and  directed  national 
education  from  1812  to  1831,  was  not  proselytising,  and 
it  was  for  some  time  largely  patronised  by  Eoman 
Catholics.  It  is  certainly  by  no  means  deserving  of  the  i 
contempt  which  some  writers  have  bestowed  on  it,  and  ij 
if  measured  by  the  spirit  of  the  time  in  which  it  was  | 
founded  it  will  appear  both  liberal  and  useful.  Its  | 
plan  was  that  there  should  be  no  religious  distinction 
in  the  appointment  of  governors  or  teachers,  and  that 
during  the  school  hours  no  catechisms,  or  books  or 
teaching  of  religious  controversy,  should  be  permitted, 
though  out  of  school  hours  ministers  of  all  denomina- 
tions were  allowed  to  teach  the  pupils  of  their  own 
creeds  without  restriction.  Great  stress  was,  however, 
laid  upon  moral  education.  The  object  of  the  schools 
was  stated  to  be  united  education,  'taking  common 
Christian  ground  for  the  foundation,  and  excluding  all 
sectarian  distinctions  from  every  part  of  the  arrange- 
ment; '  *  drawing  the  attention  of  both  denominations 
to  the  many  leading  truths  of  Christianity  in  which 
they  agree. '  To  carry  out  this  principle  it -was-a-&n- 
damental  rule  that  the  Bible  must. be-  "''^^d  without  nntp. 
or  comment  m  all  the  schools.  It  might  be  read  either 
in  the  Authorised  or  in  the  Douay  version.  It  was 
urged  that  amons^  other  advantages  this  rule  was  of 
vital  importance  in  correcting  the  constant  perjury 
which  prevailed  in  Ireland.  Oaths  were  taken  upon 
the  Testament,  and  one  of  the  Roman  Catholic  inspec- 
tors declared  before  a  parliamentary  inquiry  into  Irish 
education  that  in  many  parts  of  Connaught  he  found 
multitudes  of  the  adult  population  absolutely  ignorant 


128      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

of  what  tlie  Bible  was;  totally  unaware  that  it  con- 
tained a  Eevelation  of  the  Divine  Will/ 

The  system  seemed  for  a  considerable  time  very 
popular.  In  1825  there  were  1,490  schools  connected 
with  the  Societ}^,  containing  about  100,000  pupils. 
The  improvements  introduced  into  education  by  Bell, 
Lancaster,  and  Pestalozzi  were  largely  adopted.  Great 
attention  was  paid  to  needlework.  Two  model  schools 
were  established  for  training  masters  and  mistresses. 
In  1825  the  Commissioners  of  Education  found  that 
there  were  in  these  schools  263  Protestants  of  all  de- 
nominations and  434  Roman  Catliolics.  The  schools 
were  supported  by  a  great  deal  of  that  quiet,  self-sacri- 
ficing patriotism  which  has  always  existed  in  Ireland 
side  by  side  with  and  quite  apart  from  noisy  agitations. 
A  great  number  of  useful  publications  were  printed  by 
the  Society,  and  we  have  the  high  authority  of  Dr. 
Doyle  for  stating  that  he  never  found  anything  objec- 
tionable in  them.^  The  patrons  of  the  schools  when 
Catholics  usually  chose  Catholic  masters,  and  the  Prot- 
estant clergy  Protestant  ones,  but  within  the  schools 
the  two  religions  seem  to  have  got  on  excellently  to- 
gether. But  the  Evangelical  party,  which  was  becom- 
ing dominant  in  Irish  Protestantism,  objected  to  the 
religious  neutrality  of  the  Kildare  Street  Schools, 
while  the  Catholic  priesthood  formally  condemned  the 
unrestricted  reading  of  the  Bible  and  commanded  their 
people  to  abstain  from  them. 

A  new  system  was  accordingly  required,  and  was 
carried  through  Parliament  by  Stanley  in  1831  and  1832. 
It  was  chiefly  devised  by  Lord  Anglesey,  Plunket,  Stan- 


^  Much   information  will  be      Education  of  the  Poor  of  Ire- 
found  in  the  fourteenth  report       land  (1826). 
of  the  Society  for  Promoting  ^  Select   Committee   on    the 

Irish  Poor  (1830),  p.  428. 


THE  NATIONAL  SYSTEM  129 

ley,  Blake,  and  Lord  Cloncurry,  and  was  intended  to 
give  tlie  whole  mass  of  the  people  a  united  secular  edu- 
cation, while  it  offered  facilities  for  separate  religious 
education.  It  met  with  great  opposition.  The  Pres- 
byterians, though  they  ultimately  supported  it,  Avere 
during  the  first  eight  years  decidedly  hostile,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  the  Established  clergy  declined  to 
take  part  in  any  system  of  education  in  which  they 
were  not  allowed  to  teach  their  pupils  the  Bible;  they 
set  up  a  rival  system,  supported  by  voluntary  contribu- 
tions, and  thus  threw  the  national  education  to  a  great 
extent  into  the  hands  of  the  priests.  These  latter  were 
much  divided,  but  through  the  wise  and  tolerant  ad- 
ministration of  Dr.  Murray,  then  Archbishop  of  Dub- 
lin, they  generally  supported  it.  They  gradually,  how- 
ever, became  more  and  more  Ultramontane;  it  became 
one  of  their  great  ends  to  prevent  the  members  of  the 
two  religions  associating,  and  to  impregnate  all  teach- 
ing with  their  distinctive  ecclesiastical  tenets;  and  they 
accordingly  grew  very  hostile  to  the  National  Board. 
To  meet  these  contending  fanaticisms  the  original  sys- 
tem has  been  much  tampered  with.  The  Church  edu- 
cation schools,  in  which  the  Bible  is  taught  to  every 
one,  are  still  unassisted  by  the  Government,  but  en- 
dowments have  been  freely  given  to  sectarian  convent 
schools  managed  by  monks  or  nuns.  Several  changes, 
which  it  is  not  here  necessary  to  recount,  have  taken 
place  in  the  ordinary  schools,  and  the  great  majority 
have  ceased  to  give  united  secular  education  and  are 
essentially  separate  and  denominational,  qualified,  how- 
ever, by  a  conscience  clause.  They  have,  at  least,  con- 
ferred upon  the  rising  generation  of  Irishmen  the  in- 
estimable blessing  of  a  sound  secular  education,  and 
have  perhaps  contributed  in  some  degree  to  allay  the 
animosity  of  sects. 

VOL.  II.  9 


130      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

This  measure,  which  is  due  to  the  "Whig  ministry, 
is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  important  in  modern 
Irish  history,  for  it  met  in  a  large  degree  the  most 
pressing  and  urgent  of  Irish  needs.  The  system  was 
by  no  means  perfect.  It  was  too  exclusively  literary. 
At  first,  it  is  true,  some  excellent  attempts  were  made 
to  encourage  agricultural  education.  As  early  as  1835 
admirable  reports  were  drawn  up  on  the  subject;  a 
model  farm  was  founded  at  Glasnevin  in  1838  for  the 
purpose  of  providing  agricultural  teaching  for  national 
schoolmasters.  Several  other  agricultural  training- 
schools  and  model  farms  were  afterwards  established, 
and  itinerant  teachers  spread  some  knowledge  of  agri- 
culture through  the  provinces.  The  Devon  Commission 
of  1844  assisted  the  movement.  But  a  strong  opposi- 
tion to  State-paid  agricultural  education  arose  among 
the  English  free-traders  and  greatly  influenced  the 
Government.  They  objected  to  training  farmers  at 
public  cost;  to  the  State  paying  for,  and  taking  a  part 
in  agricultural  operations.  Peel  and  Cardwell  sympa- 
thised with  these  views;  the  model  farms  were  nearly 
all  given  up,  and  the  teaching  of  agriculture  was  almost 
restricted  to  mere  book  knowledge.  In  accordance 
with  ideas  that  were  then  widely  diffused  the  inspectors 
positively  discouraged  practical  agricultural  instruction 
as  not  really  education.^ 

The  national  system  was  also  from  the  first  weak- 
ened, dislocated,  and  impeded  by  sectarian  divisions 
and  opposition,  and  it  had  not  behind  it,  and  it  has  not 
succeeded  in  creating  that  noble  pride  in  knowledge 
and  contempt  for  ignorance  which  is  one  of  the  strong- 


^  See  Senior's  Jourrtals  relat-  land  Historicaland  Statistical, 
ing  to  Ireland,  ii.  46-47  ;  Re-  iii.  240-244  ;  Ireland  Indus- 
port  of  the  Rece.^s  Committee  trial  and  Agricultural,  ^ip.lZl 
(1896);  pp.  8-9  ;   Smith's  Ire-  -140. 


THE  TITHE  WAR  131 

est  traits  in  the  Scotch  character,  and  which  the  Scotch 
Church  has  always  encouraged.  The  extraordinary  fact 
that  after  two  generations  of  this  education  nearly  one 
out  of  every  five  voters  at  the  two  last  general  elections 
of  the  nineteenth  century  professed  to  be  unable  even 
to  read  the  name  upon  the  ballot  paper  is  a  decisive 
proof.  The  tens  of  thousands  of  Irish  emigrants  who 
were  flung  on  the  American  coast  after  the  great  famine 
were  in  their  ignorance  and  their  helplessness  a  miser- 
able contrast  to  the  emigrants  from  Teutonic  and  Scan- 
dinavian lands,  but  what  little  they  knew  was  generally 
derived  from  the  National  Schools,  and  they  had  at 
least  learnt  within  them  the  English  tongue. 

O'Connell,  on  the  whole,  supported  the  Government 
scheme  of  national  education,  but  his  speeches  on  the 
subject  show  little  interest  or  fervour,  nor  does  he  seem 
in  general  to  have  greatly  cared  for  educational  ques- 
tions. His  genuine  opinion  appears  to  have  been  that 
the  education  of  Catholics  should  be  left  wholly  under 
the  control  of  their  priests. 

Another  very  important  measure  of  this  ministry 
was  the  Tithes  Composition  Act,^  making  the  optional 
Act  of  1823  compulsory,  and  thus  extending  it  over  the 
whole  of  Ireland.  It  put  an  end  finally  to  the  gross 
injustice  of  exempting  the  grazing  land  from  tithes, 
while  the  poor  cottier  had  to  pay  for  his  small  potato 
crop;  it  made  the  landlord  responsible  for  the  payment 
of  tithes,  authorising  him  to  add  the  sum  to  the  rent; 
and  by  this  new  and  simpler  method  of  collection  it 
rendered  unnecessary  the  tithe  proctor,  who  perhaps  of 
all  men  was  the  most  hated  in  Ireland. 

At  another  time  it  would  have  been  received  ns  a 
great  boon,  but  the  tithe  war  aiming  at  the  complete 


»2&3  Wra.  IV.  c.  119. 


132      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

abolition  of  tithes  was  now  at  its  height,  and  Stanley's 
measure  was  intended  by  reforming  to  secure  the  exist- 
ing tithes.  0' Connell,  with  the  whole  body  of  the  re- 
j^eal  members,  opposed  it.  His  speeches  on  the  tithes 
question  are  among  the  most  powerful  he  ever  deliv- 
ered. It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  he  repeatedly 
disclaimed  all  wish  to  destroy  the  vested  interests  of 
the  Protestant  clergy.  He  spoke  of  them  with  respect. 
He  acknowledged  that  the  great  majority  had  shown 
no  disposition  to  extort  their  full  rights,  though  there 
had  been  a  few  lamentable  exceptions.  He  urged  that 
by  a  rearrangement  of  the  other  revenues  of  the  Church 
they  could  be  compensated  for  the  loss  of  tithes,  and 
that  at  all  events  he  was  ready  to  support  a  measure  for 
securing  their  incomes  during  their  lifetime,'  but  sub- 
ject to  these  life-interests  he  considered  Church  prop- 
erty national  property,  and  maintained  that  after  the 
death  of  the  existing  incumbents  it  might  be  justly  ap- 
propriated to  other  purposes.  His  own  proposal  was 
that  tithes  should  be  *  totally  abolished ;  not  in  name 
only,  but  in  essence  and  practical  reality.'  *  There  is 
no  tranquillity  for  Ireland,'  he  wrote,  ^  until  the  tithe 
system  is  annihilated  root  and  branch.  There  can  be 
no  compromise  with  it."  This  would  probably  have 
been  the  most  popular  solution,  and  he  believed  that  it 
would  benefit  both  landlords  and  tenants.  When,  how- 
ever, the  tithe  was  commuted  into  a  land  tax,  other 
schemes,  such  as  applying  the  fund  to  secular  instruc- 
tion or  to  building  new  charitable  institutions,  were 
advocated;  and  O'Connell  appears  finally  to  have  set- 
tled upon  the  precise  disposition  which  many  years 
after  his  death  was  adopted  by  Gladstone  in  the  orig- 
inal draft  of  his  Church  Bill.     '  My  plan,'  he  said,  in 


*See  Fagan,  ii.  142-144.  '  Fitzpatrick,  i.  538. 


THE  TITHE  WAR  133 

a  letter  to  Sharman  Crawford  in  September  1834,  '  is 
to  apply  the  fund  in  the  various  counties  of  Ireland  to 
relieve  the  occupiers  of  land  from  grand  jury  cess, 
....  to  defray  all  the  expenses  of  dispensaries,  in- 
firmaries, hospitals,  and  asylums,  and  to  multiply  the 
number  of  these  institutions  until  they  become  quite 
sufficient  for  the  wants  of  the  sick.'  ^ 

At  the  same  time  O'Connell  declared  that  he  would 
be  content  with  nothing  short  of  a  complete  diversion 
of  the  tithes,  whether  commuted  or  uncommuted,  from 
the  support  of  a  Protestant  establishment,  and  he  fully 
justified  the  conspiracy  that  was  spreading  through  a 
great  part  of  Ireland  to  refuse  its  payment;  to  exhaust 
all  legal  means  of  evading  and  delaying  it;  to  abstain 
from  purchasing  any  cattle  or  other  property  seized  for 
the  non-payment.     He  exhorted  the  people,  it  is  true, 
to  abstain  from  violence,  and  to  restrict  themselves  to 
means  that  were  within  the  letter  of  the  law.     He  stated 
that  the  great  anti- tithe  meetings  were  held  not  only 
without  his  suggestion,  but  when  he  was  actually  absent 
from  Ireland; '  but  he  publicly  declared  his  own  inten- 
tion of  never  again  voluntarily  paying  either  tithe  or 
Church  cess,  or  purchasing  any  article  sold  for  their 
non-payment.     He  described  with  great  humour  before 
a  delighted  peasant  audience  how,  by  branding  the  let- 
ter *  T  '  on  the  cow  which  was  seized  for  tithes,  it  could 
find  no  purchaser  and  at  last  came  back  to  its  original 
owner;  he  enumerated  the  various  methods  by  which 
it  was  possible  to  evade  or  defeat  the  claim;  and  he 
was  always  ready  to  place  his  legal  services  at  the  disposal 
of  those  who  were  prosecuted  in  tithe  cases.     He  re- 
minded the  House   of   Commons  that  very  recently 
great  masses  of  Englishmen,  encouraged  by  prominent 

^  Annual  Register,  1835,  p.  184. 

'  Cusack,  Speeches  of  O'Connell,  i.  298. 


134      LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

English  politicians,  had  come  to  an  agreement  to  refuse 
the  payment  of  taxes  till  the  Keform  of  Parliament  was 
carried,  and  that  the  Quakers  had  uniformly  allowed 
their  property  to  be  seized  rather  than  pay  tithes. 

The  state  of  the  country  was  frightful.  As  O'Con- 
nell  himself  said,  *  Most  respectable  men  could  not  get 
their  grass  cut  because  they  had  paid  tithes.  The  mail 
contractors  cannot  get  their  coaches  horsed  for  the 
same  reason. '  ^  Repeated  collisions  had  taken  place 
between  the  police  or  yeomanry  and  the  peasants  in 
attempts  to  collect  tithes.  In  one  of  those  which  took 
place  at  IN'ewtownbarry,  in  June  1831,  it  is  stated  that 
at  least  seventeen  persons  were  killed  and  many  others 
seriously  wounded;  on  another  occasion  not  less  than 
eighteen  police,  including  their  commanding  officer, 
were  killed  and  not  a  single  conviction  followed.  The 
law  was  utterly  paralysed.'  The  clergy,  deprived  of 
their  lawful  income,  were  thrown  into  the  deepest  dis- 
tress. Government  came  to  their  assistance  by  advanc- 
ing 60,000/.,  in  1832,  for  the  clergy  who  had  been 
unable  to  collect  their  tithes  in  the  preceding  year,  and 
it  undertook  to  collect  the  unpaid  tithes  of  1831.  The 
attempt  was  a  signal  failure.  The  arrears  for  that  year 
were  104,000/.,  and  of  that  sum,  after  fierce  conflicts  and 
much  bloodshed,  the  Government  recovered  12,000/.  at 
a  cost  of  15,000/.  In  great  districts  scarcely  anyone  ven- 
tured to  defy  the  popular  will  by  paying  the  tithes.  It 
was  with  difficulty  that  the  ordinary  legal  process  of 
distraint  was  executed;  and  when  the  cattle  or  crops  of 
the  defaulter  were  put  up  to  auction  no  one  dared  to  buy 
them.  A  lawless  combination,  sustained  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  real  grievance,  completely  triumphed. 


*  Cusack,  Speeches  of  O'Connell,  i.  244. 

'  See  on  the  tithe  war  Godkin,  Land   War  in  Ireland,  and 
Alison,  History  of  Europe,  vol.  v. 


THE  TITHE  WAR  135 

At  the  same  time  agrarian  crime  was  raging  on  a 
gigantic  scale.  It  was  stated  officially  that  in  the  sin- 
gle year  1832  there  were  more  than  9,000  crimes  per- 
petrated in  Ireland  which  were  clearly  connected  with 
the  disturbed  condition,  and  that  among  them  were 
nearly  200  cases  of  homicide.  'Think/  said  Sir  E. 
Peel,  'of  196  murders  in  one  year!'  Agrarian  crime 
had  indeed  almost  taken  in  many  districts  the  form  of 
civil  war.  In  the  eyes  of  the  peasantry  it  carried  with 
it  no  moral  stigma.  It  was  constantly  perpetrated  with 
impunity  in  broad  daylight,  the  whole  population  con- 
spiring to  shield  the  culprits. 

It  was  chiefly  connected  with  the  great  clearances 
which  form  one  of  the  most  horrible  features  of  this 
dreary  period  of  Irish  history.  I  have  noticed  in  the 
preceding  pages  the  various  influences  that  were  con- 
tributing to  the  consolidation  of  farms  and  the  im- 
provement of  estates,  and  as  a  necessary  consequence 
to  the  displacement  of  vast  numbers  of  small  pauper 
tenantry.  The  policy  of  the  Sab-letting  Act  was  to 
discourage  the  multiplication  of  under-tenants,  and  the 
disfranchisement  of  the  405.  freeholders,  and  the  vio- 
lent hostility  that  had  broken  out  between  landlord  and 
tenant  acted  powerfully  in  the  same  direction.  The 
landlord  had  no  longer  any  interest  in  accumulating 
political  power  by  creating  innumerable  small  tenancies. 
Contracts  were  more  severely  enforced;  rents  more 
punctually  exacted.  In  some  cases  there  was  a  desire 
shown  to  replace  Catholic  by  Protestant  tenants.  It 
was  urged  that  a  great  revolution  in  the  agrarian  sys- 
tem had  become  indispensably  necessary  for  good  farm- 
ing and  for  the  real  prosperity  of  the  country.  But 
these  great  evictions  took  place  in  a  country  where  there 
was  no  poor  law,  no  Government  system  of  emigration; 
where  the  landlords  in  numerous  cases  were  far  too 


136      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

poor  and  encumbered  to  give  substantial  help  to  the 
tenants  they  evicted;  where  the  employment  both  for 
agricultural  and  manufacturing  labour  was  far  below 
what  was  wanting  to  support  those  who  required  it. 

A  great  portion  of  the  country  was  in  a  state  of 
hideous  anarchy,  and  the  Coercion  Bill  of  1833  which 
was  intended  to  cope  with  it  was  one  of  the  most  severe 
in  Irish  history.'  Its  distinctive  characteristic  was  that 
it  struck  at  once  against  agrarian  crime  and  against 
political  agitation.  This  double  character  had  been 
clearly  foreshadowed  in  the  speech  delivered  by  the 
King  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  in  February  1833. 
It  deplored  that  these  disturbances  in  Ireland  had 
greatly  increased,  that  violence  had  risen  to  a  most 
fearful  height,  rendering  life  and  property  insecure, 
and  defying  the  authority  of  the  law,  and  it  asked  for 
*  such  additional  powers  as  may  be  found  necessary  for 
controlling  and  punishing  the  disturbers  of  the  public 
peace,  and  for  preserving  and  strengthening  the  legis- 
lative Union  between  the  two  countries,  which  with 
your  support  and  under  the  blessing  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence I  am  determined  to  maintain  by  all  the  measures 
in  my  power,  as  indissolubly  connected  with  the  peace, 
security,  and  welfare  of  my  people.'  The  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant was  enabled  to  proclaim  counties  as  in  a  state  of 
insurrection,  and  in  these  counties  martial  law  might 
be  proclaimed  and  the  ordinary  tribunals  and  trial  by 
juiy  suspended.  No  person  without  permission  from 
the  authorities  was  allowed  to  appear  out  of  doors  be- 
tween sunset  and  sunrise,  and  at  any  hour  of  the  night 
houses  might  be  searched,  and  if  any  of  the  inmates 
were  absent  they  might  be  arrested,  tried  before  a  mili- 
tary tribunal  and  sentenced  to  transportation. 


^  3  &  4  Wm.  IV.  c.  4. 


COERCION  BILL  OF  1833  137 

Martial  law  being  equivalent  to  a  total  suspension 
of  the  Constitution,  is  at  all  times  a  measure  of  extraor- 
dinary, though  not  necessarily  of  excessive,  severity, 
but  it  appeared  especially  so  in  Ireland  where  the  atro- 
cities perpetrated  under  that  law  in  1798  were  still 
vividly  remembered.  O'Connell  related  with  burning 
eloquence  several  of  the  real  or  alleged  miscarriages 
that  took  place  at  that  time,  and  he  dilated  with  terri- 
ble force  and  with  terrible  illustrations  upon  the  utter 
want  of  confidence  that  was  felt  in  Ireland  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  justice.  'No  one  who  reads  the  great 
speech  which  he  delivered  on  March  4,  1833,  can  doubt 
the  absolutely  despotic  character  of  the  system  set  up 
by  the  Coercion  Act,  and  the  frightful  dangers  of  abuse 
that  it  contained.  But  in  addition  to  the  powers  given 
to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  the  proclaimed  districts,  he 
had  an  unlimited  power  of  putting  down  over  the  whole 
of  Ireland  all  political  meetings  and  associations  of 
every  kind.  The  King's  speech,  which  foreshadowed 
the  measure,  like  two  preceding  ones,  contained  a  para- 
graph directed  against  O'Connell  and  his  agitation, 
and  the  Coercion  Bill  appeared  especially  obnoxious  as 
coming  from  a  Whig  ministry  in  a  reformed  Parlia- 
ment, immediately  after  the  Reform  Bill  which  O'Con- 
nell had  contributed  not  a  little  to  carry. 

It  is  scarcely  possible,  without  possessing  the  detailed 
evidence  which  is  at  the  disposal  of  a  government,  to 
pronounce  with  confidence  upon  whether  the  state  of 
the  country  required  or  justified  these  clauses.  O'Con- 
nell bitterly  complained  that  some  Irish  members  with 
whom  he  had  a  general  sympathy  voted  for  the  measure 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  absolutely  necessary.  Lord 
Al thorp  stated  publicly  that  there  were  others  who, 
though  they  voted  against  it,  acknowledged  privately 
that  necessity.     *  If,'  wrote  Bishop  Doyle,  *  we  are  not 


138      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

to  have  good  government  or  wise  laws — and  I  see  no 
prospect  of  either — I  prefer  Lord  Grey's  Bill  to  any 
other  less  despotic  measure.  If  we  are  to  be  subjected 
to  a  despotism,  let  it  be  the  despotism  of  gentlemen, 
though  but  twenty-one  years  of  age,  not  of  the  brutal 
cayiaille  composing  the  Trades  Unions  and  Blackfeet 
confederacies.  The  honest  and  industrious  people  of 
this  country  will  suffer  less  and  prosper  more  under  the 
iron  rule  of  the  constituted  authorities — let  these  be 
whom  they  may — than  under  the  yoke  of  the  impious  and 
seditious  who  now  torment  them,  and  drive  them  into 
all  manner  of  folly  and  excess.'  ^ 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Whig  Coercion  Bill  ex- 
asperated O'Oonnell  to  the  highest  degree,  and  at  no 
period  of  his  career  was  his  language  more  violent  than 
during  the  ministry  of  Lord  Grey.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  he  talked  of  '  the  base,  bloody  and  brutal  Whigs; ' 
describing  them  as  men  '  with  brains  of  lead  and  hearts 
of  stone  and  fangs  of  iron.'  He  denounced  the  King's 
speech  and  the  address  in  reply  to  it  as  '  brutal  and 
bloody.'  He  declared  that  the  Whigs  ^had  always 
proved  the  bitterest  enemies  of  Ireland.'  It  was  they 
who  violated  the  Treaty  of  Limerick ;  who  enacted  the 
penal  laws,  who  devised  the  Insurrection  Act  of  1807, 
which  was  the  precursor  and  in  some  respects  the  model 
of  the  new  Coercion  Bill,  and  '  the  Whigs  of  the  pres- 
ent day  were  only  treading  in  the  steps  of  the  same 
party  which  had  gone  before  them. '  The  part,  how- 
ever, of  the  Bill  which  was  most  obnoxious  to  him  was 
naturally  that  which  was  directed  against  all  political 
activity.  The  repeal  of  the  Union,  he  said,  whether  it 
was  wise  or  the  reverse,  was  an  object  at  which  it  was 
perfectly  constitutional  to  aim.     If  it  had  been  consti- 


»  Life  of  Dr.  Doyle,  ii.  452. 


O'CONNELL  DENOUNCES  THE  COERCION  BILL    139 

tutional  before  1800  to  advocate  a  Union,  it  was  equally 
constitutional  after  1800  to  advocate  its  repeal.  It  was 
simply  a  question  of  repealing  an  Act  of  Parliament. 
Parliament  had  an  undoubted  right  to  effect  it  and  the 
people  had  an  equally  undoubted  right  to  petition  for  it. 
It  was  not  a  new  question.  It  had  been  agitated  in 
1810  and  1817;  in  1830  under  a  Tory  government;  in 
1831  under  a  Whig  government;  but  the  agitations  had 
been  suspended  when  the  Keform  Bill  had  been  brought 
in,  in  the  hope  that  a  reformed  Parliament  would  re- 
dress the  wrongs  of  Ireland,  and,  he  added,  '  I  have 
little  doubt  that  it  would  have  been  totally  given  up 
when  the  Irish  Reform  Bill  was  brought  in  had  that 
Bill  been  framed  in  a  spirit  of  fairness  and  equality.' 
The  repeal  movement  was  started  on  the  supposition 
that  without  a  domestic  parliament  there  could  be  no 
real  equality  between  England  and  Ireland,  and  no 
speedy  redress  of  Irish  grievances;  and  the  present  Bill, 
welcomed  by  the  first  reformed  Parliament,  was  its 
fullest  justification  and  would  be  the  most  powerful 
argument  for  its  continuance.  This  portion  of  the 
Bill,  he  said,  was,  in  fact,  directed  against  a  single 
individual — himself.  Agrarian  and  tithe  disturbances 
were  chiefly  reigning  in  one  of  the  four  provinces  of 
Ireland.  The  area  of  disturbance  was  much  smaller 
than  it  had  been  in  1824,  when  no  less  than  sixteen 
counties  were  affected,  and  yet  the  provisions  suppressing 
all  political  liberty  extended  over  the  whole  of  Ireland. 
He  denied  with  great  emphasis  that  predial  insur- 
rection had  anything  to  do  with  political  agitation; 
*  predial  agitation  subsisted  for  forty  years  before  politi- 
cal agitation  commenced,'  He  said — and  in  this  re- 
spect with  much  truth — that  he  had  uniformly  urged 
the  people  to  avoid  disturbances  and  to  keep  strictly 
within  the  limit  of  the  law,  and  had  uniformly  re- 


140      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

garded  outbursts  of  crime  as  the  most  formidable  ob- 
stacle to  his  policy.  '  The  fact  is  that  political  agitation 
is  calculated  to  stop  predial  agitation,'  and  he  con- 
tended with  many  illustrations  that  as  political  agita- 
tion extended,  predial  agitation  diminished;  that  some 
of  the  worst  periods  of  agrarian  crime  had  been  periods 
of  complete  political  apathy;  that  some  of  the  periods 
in  which  political  agitation  was  most  active  had  been 
singularly  free  from  crime. 

He  concluded  a  speech,  which  should  be  read  by 
all  who  desire  to  understand  O'Connell  and  his  times, 
by  a  peroration  of  passionate  invective,  which  clearly 
shows  the  course  which  Irish  popular  feeling  was  tak- 
ing. He  called  upon  the  House,  if  it  would  preserve 
the  connection  and  conciliate  Ireland,  to  remember 
that  this  connection  '  has  never  yet  conferred  a  single 
blessing  upon  the  country;  that  she  knows  nothing  of 
you  but  by  distress,  forfeitures  and  confiscations;  that 
you  have  never  visited  her  but  in  anger;  that  the  sword 
of  desolation  has  often  swept  over  her  as  when  Crom- 
well sent  his  80,000  to  perish;  that  you  have  burdened 
her  with  grinding  penal  laws  despite  the  faith  of 
treaties,  and  that  you  have  neglected  to  fulfil  the  prom- 
ises 3^ou  made  her.  You  have,  it  is  true,  granted 
Catholic  Emancipation,  but  twenty-nine  years  after  it 
was  promised,  arid  twenty-five  years  after  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Ireland  must  of  necessity  have  done  so.  We 
know  you  as  yet  but  in  our  sufferings  and  our  wrongs, 
and  you  now  give  us  as  a  boon  this  Act  which  deprives  us 
of  trial  by  jury  and  substitutes  courts-martial;  which 
deprives  us  of  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act,  and,  in  a  word, 
imposes  on  a  person  the  necessity  of  proving  himself 
innocent.  That  Act  you  give  us,  and  you  tell  us  it  will 
put  down  the  agitation  for  the  repeal  of  the  Union. '  ^ 

*  Cusack,  S;peeches  and  Letters  of  0'  Connell,  i.  313-356. 


O'CONNELL  DENOUNCES  THE  COERCION  BILL    141 

The  Coercion  Bill,  though  introduced  by  Lord 
Althorp,  was  chiefly  carried  through  Parliament  by 
Stanley,  and  he  conducted  his  case  with  consummate 
eloquence  and  skill.  The  great  speech  in  which  he  de- 
scribed the  crime  and  violence  then  existing  in  Ireland 
and  the  inflammatory  language  which  had  been  used  in 
Ireland  by  O'Connell,  and  still  more  by  O'ConnelPs 
followers,  had  an  extraordinary  influence  upon  his 
hearers,  and  was  long  remembered  as  one  of  the  finest 
specimens  of  parliamentary  eloquence.  He  declared 
that  O'Connell,  while  professing  to  support  the  law 
and  conciliate  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  spared  no 
pains  to  excite  the  passions  of  his  countrymen,  and  to 
assail  every  member  of  the  Government  with  an  abuse 
disgraceful  not  to  them  but  to  him  who  uttered  it  and 
yet  claimed  the  character  of  a  gentleman,  and  this 
strain  was  not  the  mere  ebullition  of  a  momentary 
passion  but  was  to  be  found  in  his  deliberately  printed 
letters.  Speaking  of  his  own  experience,  he  observed 
that  O'Connell  in  all  his  speeches  in  Ireland  never  once 
called  him  an  Englishman,  but  always  applied  to  him 
the  opprobrious  epithet  as  he  meant  it,  and  as  his  audi- 
ence understood  it,  of  Saxon.  Macaulay  spoke  on  the 
same  side,  and  Sir  Eobert  Peel  and  the  whole  Tory 
party  supported  the  Government.  O'Connell  had  little 
real  help,  except  from  Shell,  and  he  had  to  face  a  bit- 
terly hostile  House,  and  interruptions  sufficient  to  dis- 
concert any  less  practised  orator. 

The  battle  lasted  for  eleven  days,  and  the  Coercion 
Bill  of  1833  was  at  last  carried  by  466  to  87,  and  on  its 
third  reading  by  363  to  84.  The  extraordinary  vigour 
and  eloquence  of  O'Connell's  opposition  were  not,  how- 
ever, wholly  wasted.  A  strong  feeling  against  the 
political  clauses  of  the  measure  grew  up  among  many 
supporters  of  the  Government,  and  when,  in  1834,  it 


142      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

was  proposed  to  renew  them  there  was  a  division  in  the 
Cabinet  and  a  long  and  angry  dispute,  which  ended  in 
their  abandonment  and  at  the  same  time  in  the  resig- 
nation of  Lord  Grey. 

Much  remedial  legislation  for  Ireland  Avas  carried  in 
the  early  days  of  the  reformed  Parliament,  and  changes 
were  made  in  the  administration  of  the  country  which 
O'Connell  appears  to  have  valued  little  less.  In  the 
si:)ring  of  1833  Stanley  was  promoted  to  the  Secretary- 
ship of  the  Colonies,  and  Littleton  took  his  place  as 
Chief  Secretary  .for  Ireland.  The  prosecution  insti- 
tuted by  Blackburne  against  O'Connell  was  dropped. 
In  the  summer  of  tlie  same  year  Lord  Anglesey,  broken 
in  health  and  spirits,  resigned  the  Yiceroyalty,  pursued 
even  into  his  retirement  by  the  frantic,  mendacious 
abuse  '  of  O'Connell.  lie  was  replaced  by  Lord  Welles- 
ley,  who  was  father-in-law  to  the  new  Chief  Secretary 
and  was  believed  to  be  greatly  under  his  influence.  A 
few  other  less  important  changes  were  at  the  same  time 
made.  The  great  and  dangerous  question  of  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Protestant  Established  Church  was  dealt 
with — not,  indeed,  on  the  drastic  lines  which  O'Con- 
nell desired,  but  still  with  considerable  effect.  The 
Vestry  Act,  which  enabled  a  Protestant  vestry  to  tax 
the  immense  Catholic  majority  of  a  parish,  in  which 
there  were  often  not  a  score  of  Protestants,  for  the  re- 
pairs of  the  parish  church,  for  communion  wine  and 
for  some  other  purposes,  was  repealed,  thus  removing 
a  most  real  grievance  and  one  which  was  bitterly  re- 
sented; and  the  Church  Temporalities  Act,  which  was 


'  See  O'Connell's  Second  glesey-Stanley  Administration 

Letter    to     his     Constituents.  thanduringany  other  ten  years 

'  There  was  more  human  blood  of  our  wretched  story.'  Cusack, 

shed  in  Ireland  during  the  two  ii.  416. 
and  a  half  years  of  the  An- 


REMEDIAL  MEASURES  143 

originated  by  Stanley,  effected  at  the  same  time  a  con- 
siderable change  in  the  internal  condition  of  the  Church, 
by  suppressing  ten  bishoprics  as  well  as  a  number  of 
minor  dignitaries.  Considerable  reductions  were  made 
in  the  revenues  of  the  other  bishoprics;  a  tax  was  im- 
posed on  livings  of  more  than  300/.  a  year;  and  pro- 
vision was  made  out  of  the  surplus  thus  obtained  for 
augmenting  small  livings  and  building  glebes  and 
churches,  and  defraying  the  expenses  that  had  before 
been  thrown  on  the  vestry  cess.  The  Establishment 
was  thus  made  much  more  defensible.  If  it  continued 
to  be  an  anomaly  it  ceased  to  be  a  scandal;  its  offices 
were  no  longer  pampered  sinecures,  and  its  dignities  at 
least  bore  a  fair  proportion  to  the  number  of  its  wor- 
shippers. The  unceremonious  way  in  which  superfluous 
bishoprics  were  abolished  by  a  secular  Parliament  gave 
great  offence  in  some  quarters  in  England,  and  was  one 
of  the  proximate  causes  of  the  Tractarian  movement. 

A  large  portion  of  the  Government  were  desirous  of 
coupling  with  this  measure  a  provision  for  appropriat- 
ing to  secular  purposes  the  surplus  revenues  of  the 
Church  resulting  from  the  grant  of  perpetual  leases  of 
Church  lands,  but  this  clause,  which  was  very  restricted 
in  its  operation,  was  abandoned  in  Committee  as  likely 
to  endanger  the  success  of  the  Bill.  The  principle, 
however,  of  the  right  of  the  State  to  appropriate  these 
surplus  revenues  to  other  than  ecclesiastical  purposes 
was  soon  revived,  and  it  became  for  some  years  the  great 
battlefield  of  politics,  and  ultimately  led  to  the  down- 
fall of  the  Whig  ministry. 

Before,  however,  we  enter  on  this  question,  a  few 
words  may  be  devoted  to  the  personal  relations  of 
0 'Council  with  the  ministry.  He  kept  up  a  very  con- 
fidential and  constant  correspondence  with  his  friend, 
Fitzpatrick,  in  which  we  may  trace  clearly  the  vicissi- 


144      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tudes  of  his  feeling.  In  the  early  months  of  1833  his 
letters  breathe  the  most  intense  antipathy  to  the  gov- 
ernment of  Lord  Grey — an  extreme  desire  and  an 
ardent  hope  that  it  might  break  down  through  the 
combined  opposition  of  Eadicals,  Eepealers  and  Tories; 
through  its  own  divisions;  through  the  hostility  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  perhaps  of  the  King.     On  June  4  he 

wrote,  '  The  ministry  must  resign It  cannot 

hold  longer  together,  and  their  efforts  to  conquer  the 

King  must  fail Every  change  is  for  the  better 

for  us It  is  a  comfort  to  have  this  scoundrel 

Administration  in  trouble.' 

The  very  next  day,  however,  his  tone  is  totally 
changed.  *  This,'  he  wrote,  '  is  the  crisis.  The  Lords 
must  become  ciphers.  I  am  taking  a  strong  part  with 
the  Government,  and  have  had  the  honour  of  some  of 
their  confidential  communications.'  Then  follows  a 
very  illuminating  sentence:  'A  little  bird  whispers  to 
me  *'  no  prosecution."  ' 

Two  days  later  he  wrote  to  another  friend :  *  I  joined 
the  Whig  ministry  last  night  and  contributed  perhaps 
a  good  deal  to  the  extent  and  satisfactory  nature  of 

their  victory You   do   not   know  the  Whigs. 

To  be  respected  by  them  they  must  feel  one  to  be  a  for- 
midable enemy.  They  have  always  courted  their  ene- 
mies. I  look  to  success  with  them  only  from  attacking 
them  with  virulence  until  they  believe  me  formidable.' 
The  disappearance  of  Stanley  from  the  Irish  Govern- 
ment was  exceedingly  acceptable  to  O'Connell,  and  he 
was  for  a  short  time  on  intimate  terms  with  Littleton 
who  succeeded,  and  he  was  glad  of  the  arrival  of  Lord 
Wellesley,  though  he  spoke  of  him  personally  as  *a 
mere  driveller.'  ^If  we  were  once  fairly  rid  of  Black- 
burne,  I  should  expect  all  to  be  better.'  'The  Tories 
are  gone  for  ever,  extinguished  beyond  and  without 


O'CONNELL'S  RELATION  TO  THE  MINISTRY      145 

hope.  ^  He  speaks  in  August  of  ^  the  lures  '  that  were 
thrown  out  to  him  to  accept  office,  and  in  September 
he  writes :  ^  You  now  can  see  that  the  Attorney-General- 
ship and  the  Chancellorship  in  prospective  are  at  my 
command.''  The  AVhig  Government  had  given  him 
the  silk  gown  and  the  precedence  at  the  Bar  to  which 
he  was  most  manifestly  entitled. 

It  seems  evident  from  these  letters  that  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1833,  and  immediately  after  the  departure  of 
Anglesey,  negotiations  had  been  going  on  for  giving 
office  to  O'Connell.  There  was,  however,  little  eager- 
ness on  either  side.  One  section  of  the  ministers  ap- 
pears to  have  agreed  with  Bishop  Doyle  that  O'Connell 
would  only  be  safe  in  office,  but  both  Lord  Grey  and 
Lord  Landsdowne  were  extremely  reluctant  to  enter 
into  any  terms  with  him,  and  O'Connell  himself  during 
all  the  earlier  part  of  the  year  had  been  inveigliing 
against  the  ministry  in  the  most  furious  terms.  He 
finally  resolved  not  to  accept  office.  A  remarkable  let- 
ter to  Fitzpatrick,  dated  September  17,  1833,  expresses 
his  position  very  fully.  *  The  reports,'  he  says,  *  of  my 
taking  office  arc  now  only  so  much  less  idle  than  for- 
merly by  this  circumstance,  that  the  ministry  have  made 
and  are  making  more  direct  offers  to  me.  They  are 
also  putting  out  of  the  way  all  those  with  whom  I 
would  not  and  could  not  act.  But  all  this  does  not 
make  me  one  whit  the  less  immovable.  If  I  wont  into 
office  I  should  be  their  servant — that  is  their  slave,  l^y 
staying  out  of  office  I  am  to  a  considerable  extent  their 

master Without  taking  office  I  will  be  able  to 

get:  1,  a  number  of  bad  magistrates  removed;  2,  the 
yeomanry  disarmed;  3,  the  tithes  abolished;  4,  the 
Establishment  of  the  Protestant   Church  reduced  in 


'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  355-385. 

VOL.  II.  10 


146       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

every  parish  the  overwhelming  majority  of  whom  are 
Catholics  or  Dissenters;  5,  to  have  offices  filled  with 
Liberals  to  the  exclusion  of  Orangists.  These  are  great 
things,  and  instead  of  soliciting  some  of  them,  as  I 
should  do  were  I  in  ofiice,  I  will  command  them  when 
out  of  office.  Add  to  these  the  redress  of  corporate 
abuses  and  you  will  see  that  prospects  advance  for  the 
Irish  people,  and  I  must  keep  out  of  office  to  be  dis- 
engaged to  forward  the  movement Then  lastly, 

but  first  in  order  of  magnitude,  there  is  the  repeal  of 

the  Union Believe  me  that  if  God  is  pleased 

to  spare  my  life  but  a  few,  very,  very  few  years  longer 
(perhaps  months  would  do,  and  I  believe  months  will 
do),  I  will  certainly  have  multitudes  of  Protestants  of 
my  party  for  the  repeal. ' 

Then  comes  a  curiously  significant  passage  which  I 
believe  indicates  a  thought  that  often  haunted  him. 
*  But  may  not  the  repeal  be  dispensed  with  if  we  get 
beneficent  measures  without  it  ?  This  is  a  serious  ques- 
tion and  one  uj)on  which  good  men  may  well  differ;  but 
it  is  my  duty  to  make  up  my  mind,  upon  it  and  I  have 
made  up  my  mind  accordingly — that  there  can  be  no 
safety  for,  no  permanent  prosperity  in,  Ireland  without 
a  repeal  of  the  Union.  This  is  my  firm  and  unalter- 
able conviction We  must  have  the  Irish  rents 

spent  in  Ireland Let  those  who  will  not  live 

in  Ireland  sell  their  Irish  estates Irish  affairs 

must  be  managed  by  Irishmen.'  ^ 

O'Connell,  however,  while  constantly  pressing  on 
the  repeal  question  in  Ireland,  both  in  his  speeches  and 
in  published  letters,  and  making  it  a  test  at  every  elec- 
tion which  he  could  control,  was  very  unwilling  to  en- 
counter the  certain  defeat  which  he  would  meet  with  if 


'  Fitzpatrick,  i.  387-389. 


REPEAL  RESOLUTION,   1834  147 

he  brought  it  before  the  House  of  Commons.  But  the 
pressure  of  the  party  behind  him,  combined  with  the 
taunts  of  his  opponents,  proved  irresistible,  and  in 
April  1834  he  most  reluctantly  moved  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  Select  Committee  *  to  inquire  into  and  report 
on  the  measures  by  which  the  dissolution  of  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Ireland  was  effected;  on  the  effects  of  that 
measure  upon  Ireland,  and  upon  the  labourers  in  hus- 
bandry and  the  operatives  in  manufactures,  and  upon 
the  probable  consequences  of  continuing  the  legislative 
Union  between  both  countries.'  His  speech,  which 
lasted  five  hours,  like  all  his  greater  efforts  is  well 
worthy  of  study,  but  he  acknowledged  the  extreme  ner- 
vousness with  which  he  entered  on  the  debate,  and  the 
speech  was  certainly  not  among  the  most  effective  he 
delivered.  Much  of  it  consisted  of  historical  disserta- 
tions only  slightly  connected  with  the  subject,  and 
much  of  it  required  the  manipulation  of  great  masses 
of  figures,  a  task  in  which  he  was  never  peculiarly  suc- 
cessful. He  was  answered  with  extraordinary  fulness 
of  detail  by  Spring  Rice,  who  undertook  to  prove  by 
a  long  array  of  statistics  that  Ireland  had  grown  more 
prosperous  since  the  Union,  and  by  Sir  Eobert  Peel, 
who  at  least  proved,  in  an  argument  of  unanswerable 
force,  the  impossibility  of  two  democratic  Parliaments 
with  equal  powers  and  with  the  same  executive  working 
side  by  side  in  the  British  Isles.  Only  a  single  English 
member  voted  with  O'Connell,  who  was  defeated  by 
523  to  38. 

In  the  meantime  the  "Whig  Government,  which  on 
the  morrow  of  the  Reform  Bill  seemed  certain  of  a  long 
period  of  overwhelming  supremacy,  was  steadily  declin- 
ing. Several  things  acted  against  it.  There  was  the 
Conservative  reaction,  which  seldom  fails  in  England 
to  follow  a  great  step  in  the  direction  of  democratic 


148      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

change,  and  which  was  intensified  by  the  subversive 
doctrines  continually  put  forward  by  the  English  Radi- 
cals. There  was  the  consummate  skill,  tact,  and  mod- 
eration of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who,  while  protecting  the 
Government  against  Radical  attacks,  led  the  English 
people  more  and  more  to  the  belief  that,  in  spite  of  his 
opposition  to  the  popular  Reform  Bill,  he  was  their 
most  capable  living  statesman,  and  a  man  to  whom  the 
administration  of  affairs  and  the  protection  of  popular 
interests  might  be  most  safely  entrusted.  There  was 
the  great  division  in  the  majority,  for  the  fissure  be- 
tween Whigs  and  Radicals  was  steadily  widening,  and 
in  the  Cabinet  itself  there  were  grave  differences  about 
the  manner  in  which  the  difficulties  in  Ireland  should 
be  encountered.  The  question  whether  the  revenues 
of  the  Established  Church  should  be  not  merely  re- 
arranged but  diminished  had,  as  we  have  seen,  nearly 
wrecked  the  Church  Temporalities  Bill  of  Grey,  and 
the  same  question  revived  in  May  1834.  A  private 
member  named  Ward  introduced  a  resolution  pledging 
the  House  to  appropriate  the  surplus  revenues  of  the 
Irish  Church  to  secular  purposes.  He  was  supported 
by  the  English  Radicals  as  well  as  by  O'Connell.  The 
measure  was  met  by  the  previous  question,  which  was 
carried  by  396  to  120,  but  it  elicited  sharply  conflicting 
views  from  Lord  John  Russell  and  Stanley,  and  the  re- 
sult was  that  Stanley,  the  most  brilliant  debater,  and 
Sir  J.  Graham,  one  of  the  ablest  administrators  of  the 
"Whigs,  with  a  few  others,  seceded  from  the  Govern- 
ment. 

O'Connell  ridiculed  the  small  number  of  secession- 
ists, quoting  in  one  of  his  speeches,  with  great  effect, 
the  lines  of  Canning : 

Adown  thy  dale  romantic  Ashborne  glides, 
The  Derby  Dilly  with  just  six  insides. 


SECESSION  OF  STANLEY  149 

In  his  letters  to  Fitzpatrick,  he  said  that  Stanley  was 
irrevocably  ruined  in  public  opinion,  and  that  Graham, 
was  only  '  a  political  goose ; '  but,  in  truth,  the  ability 
and  influence  then  withdrawn  from  the  Whigs  were 
never  adequately  replaced,  and  the  seceders  had  a 
powerful  body  of  public  opinion  behind  them.  With 
the  exception  of  a  small  group  of  Eadicals^  few  persons 
in  England  were  prepared  to  support  such  a  measure 
as  the  disendowment  of  the  Irish  Church.  A  growing 
school  at  Oxford  and  in  the  country  looked  upon  par- 
liamentary interference  with  Church  revenues  as  sacri- 
lege, and  the  famous  work  of  Gladstone  on  *  Church 
and  State,'  which  appeared  in  1838,  embodied  and 
widely  diffused  what  may  be  called  the  transcendental 
arguments  in  favour  of  establishments.  Sir  R.  Peel 
admitted  that  the  State  had  a  right  to  change  and  regu- 
late the  distribution  of  Church  revenues,  but  he  denied 
that  it  had  any  right  to  divert  them  from  Church  pur- 
poses; and,  in  the  case  of  the  Irish  Church,  he  main- 
tained on  the  ground  of  the  Act  of  Union  that  disen- 
dowment would  be  a  distinct  breach  of  faith.  That 
Act,  he  said,  *  differs  in  this  respect  from  an  ordinary 
law,  that  it  was  a  national  compact,  involving  the  con- 
ditions on  which  the  Protestant  Parliament  of  Ireland 
resigned  its  independent  existence.  In  that  compact 
express  provision  is  made  which,  if  anything  can  have, 
has  an  obligation  more  binding  than  that  of  ordinary 

law A   right  was  reserved  in  that  Act  with 

respect  to  the  removal  of  the  civil  disabilities  of  the 
Catholics,  but  no  right  was  reserved  to  the  United  Par- 
liament to  deal  with  the  property  of  the  Church  of 
Ireland.'  Peel,  indeed,  on  this  point  somewhat  under- 
stated his  case.  The  Irish  Parliament  had  given  the 
maintenance  of  the  Established  Church  in  Ireland  a 
place  in  the  Union  compact  quite  apart  from  and  supe- 


150      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

rior  to  any  other  portion  of  the  Act.  By  the  fifth  arti- 
cle it  made  it,  and  it  alone,  *  an  essential  and  funda- 
mental part  of  the  Union.' 

The  Tory  party,  therefore,  whether  they  adopted 
the  extreme  views  of  the  new  Oxford  school  or  the 
more  moderate  views  of  Sir  Kobert  Peel,  were  united 
in  resisting  any  diminution  of  the  revenues  of  the 
Church;  and  they  could  enlist  in  their  cause  the  two 
cries  of  *  No  Popery  ! '  and  *  The  Church  in  danger  ! ' 
which  were  probably  the  most  powerful  in  England. 
The  Whigs,  as  we  have  seen,  were  not  equally  united. 
A  small  but  very  able  section  agreed  with  Sir  Robert 
Peel  that  the  right  of  Parliament  extended  only  to  the 
redistribution,  but  not  to  the  alienation  of  these  eccle- 
siastical revenues.  The  main  body,  including  Lord 
Grey,  Lord  Althorp,  and  Lord  John  Russell,  main- 
tained that  Parliament  had  a  right,  when  the  wants  of 
the  Irish  Protestants  were  adequately  supplied,  to  apply 
the  surplus  revenues  of  the  Church  to  purposes  of  edu- 
cation or  of  charity  that  would  be  beneficial  to  the 
whole  community. 

A  few  weeks  after  the  secession  of  Stanley  came  the 
division  in  the  Cabinet  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
on  the  question  of  renewing  the  political  clauses  of  the 
Coercion  Act.  It  was  at  this  time  of  the  first  impor- 
tance to  the  Government  to  establish  a  cordial  under- 
standing with  the  Irish  members  in  order  to  carry  their 
tithe  legislation,  and  the  indignation  of  O'Connell  at 
these  clauses  formed  the  chief  obstacle.  Littleton  the 
Chief  Secretary,  and  Wellesley  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  as 
well  as  Althorp  the  leader  of  the  House,  were  in  favour 
of  dropping  them,  and  Blackburne,  the  Irish  Attorney- 
General,  fully  acquiesced.  Without  the  knowledge  of 
Grey,  but  with  the  assent  of  Althorp,  Littleton  com- 
municated the  state  of  things  confidentially  to  O'Con- 


POLITICAL  CLAUSES  OF  THE  COERCION  ACT     151 

nell,  expressing  his  entire  conviction  that  when  the 
measure  was  renewed  it  would  be  confined  to  agrarian 
disturbances,  and  adding  that  he  did  not  think  it  pos- 
sible for  him  to  vote  for  it  in  any  other  form.  O'Con- 
nell  expressed  some  doubt  about  the  other  members  of 
the  Cabinet,  and  especially  about  Grey,  but  he  at  length 
accepted  the  assurances  of  Littleton;  he  promised  to 
treat  the  communication  as  confidential,  and  in  conse- 
quence of  it  he  refrained  from  opposing  a  Government 
candidate  who  was  standing  for  Wexford.  In  the  Cab- 
inet, however.  Grey  insisted  on  the  retention  of  the 
political  clauses  and  he  carried  with  him  the  majority; 
and  ten  days  after  his  first  communication  Littleton 
was  obliged  to  inform  O'Connell  that  the  Cabinet  had 
decided  to  renew  them,  and  that  he  himself  would  vote 
for  them. 

O'Connell  was  naturally  extremely  angry.  He  said 
that  Littleton  was  bound  at  once  to  resign,  but  Little- 
ton did  not  do  so,  and  though  a  little  later  he  tendered 
his  resignation,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  by 
his  colleagues  to  withdraw  it.  O'Connell  declared  that 
he  had  been  tricked  and  deceived.  He  considered  him- 
self absolved  from  his  promise  of  secrecy;  and  he 
brought  the  matter  before  the  House  of  Commons.* 
There  had,  in  truth,  been  great  indiscretion  and  mis- 
management, though  not,  I  think,  any  real  bad  faith; 
but  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  O'Connell  under  the 
circumstances  of  the  case  can  be  greatly  blamed  for 
having  disclosed  the  communication  which  had  been 
made  to  him  by  Littleton.  His  conduct  at  least  fell  far 
short  of  *  the  black  perfidy  '  of  which  Littleton  accused 
him,  and,  although  he  afterwards  acknowledged  fully 


*  See  the  debate  in  Hansard,  July  3,  1834,  and  Littleton's  own 
account,  Memoirs  of  Lord  Hatherton,  especially  i>p.  11-14,  52-58. 


152      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  good  faith  of  Littleton,  he  had  real  and  great  cause 
of  complaint.  The  Government  was  for  a  time  in  im- 
minent danger  of  breaking  down.  The  dispute  ended 
in  the  resignation  of  Lord  Grey,  who  was  replaced  by 
Lord  Melbourne.  A  new  Bill  was  introduced  and  car- 
ried instead  of  the  Coercion  Act,  omitting  both  the 
court-martial  clause  and  the  political  clauses  of  the 
former  measure,  and  Wellesley  and  Littleton  remained 
in  the  Irish  Government. 

O'Connell  considered  this  on  the  whole  a  triumph. 
He  had  substantially  gained  his  point  about  the  Coer- 
cion Act.  He  had  the  credit — such  as  it  was — of  turn- 
ing out  the  ministry  of  Lord  Grey — the  first  ministry 
of  the  reformed  Parliament.  The  resignations  of  Stan- 
ley and  Grey  had  removed  from  the  ministry  his  most 
formidable  and  inflexible  opponents,  and  Lord  Dun- 
cannon,  who  was  his  closest  friend  in  the  ministry,  ex- 
changed the  Woods  and  Forests  for  the  more  important 
place  of  Home  Secretary.  '  We  are  on  the  way,'  he 
wrote  to  Fitzpatrick,  *  from  a  half  Whig,  half  Tory 
government  to  one  half  Radical,  half  Whig,  without 
the  slightest  admixture  of  Toryism.'  He  had  great 
hopes  that  he  would  be  able  to  pledge  the  new  ministry 
'  to  a  lay  appropriation  of  any  funds  to  be  raised  in  lieu 
of  tithes.'  This,  he  said,  would  be  a  declaration  *  that 
there  shall  be  no  more  parsons  paid  when  there  are  not 
Protestants  to  constitute  a  flock,  and  this  will  be  the 
first  great  step  to  liberate  Ireland  from  supporting  a 
Church  not  of  the  people.'  * 

The  influence  of  O'Connell  over  the  Melbourne 
Government  was  certainly  much  greater  than  over  its 
predecessor,  though  largely  for  this  very  reason  the 
hold  of  the  Whig  party  on  the  English  people  was 


*  Fitzpatrick,  i.  445-455. 


FIRST  MELBOURNE  MINISTRY  153 

weakened  by  the  change,  and  the  star  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  mounted  higher  above  the  horizon.  The  Govern- 
ment, however,  as  yet  was  by  no  means  subservient  to 
O'Connell.  It  was  contrary  to  his  wishes  that  Welles- 
ley  and  Littleton  retained  their  posts,  and  to  his  in- 
tense indignation  Blackburne  still  continued  Attorney- 
General.  In  letter  after  letter  to  Lord  Duncannon  he 
poured  out  the  bitterest  complaints  of  the  ingratitude 
of  the  Whigs  for  the  support  he  had  given  them,  and 
of  their  systematic  appointment  of  men  who  were  either 
incompetent,  or  anti-Catholic  in  their  views. 

The  change  which  brought  Lord  Melbourne  to  the 
head  of  affairs  took  place  in  July  1834.  In  the  en- 
suing November  the  whole  aspect  of  politics  suddenly 
changed.  The  death  of  Lord  Spencer  calling  Lord 
Al thorp  to  the  House  of  Lords  deprived  the  House  of 
Commons  of  a  most  popular  leader,  and  William  IV. 
then  took  a  step  which  no  sovereign  of  the  House  of 
Hanover  except  his  father  would  have  ventured  to  take. 
Without  waiting  for  any  hostile  vote  in  the  House  of 
Commons  he,  of  his  own  authority,  dismissed  the  min- 
istry and  summoned  Wellington  and  Peel  to  fill  their 
place.  The  pretext  of  the  dismissal  was  that  Lord 
John  Russell  was  not  capable  of  filling  the  place  of 
Lord  Althorp,  but  the  reason  behind  this  was  that  the 
Government  were  being  more  and  more  committed  to 
the  policy  of  diverting  to  secular  purposes  part  of  the 
revenues  of  the  Irish  Established  Church.  To  this 
policy  William  IV.  was  absolutely  opposed.  Like  his 
two  predecessors,  he  regarded  the  oath  which  he  had 
taken  at  his  Coronation  to  maintain  that  establishment 
as  a  binding  pledge  that  he  would  use  all  his  powers  to 
prevent  its  injury. 

It  was  a  bold  and  at  least  premature  step,  taken 
during  the  absence  of  Peel  on  the  Continent  and  with- 


154       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

out  any  consultation  with  him,  but  the  King  rightly 
judged  that  the  popularity  of  that  statesman  was  rising 
in  the  country,  and  that  the  dismissal  of  the  Whig  min- 
istry would  arouse  no  serious  indignation.  He  was  mis- 
taken, however,  if  he  imagined  that  the  Conservative 
reaction  had  reached  such  a  point  as  to  render  possible 
an  election  like  that  of  1784,  which  had  decisively  vin- 
dicated the  unconstitutional  action  of  George  III., 
shattered  the  forces  of  the  coalition,  and  given  Pitt 
a  long  period  of  undisputed  ascendency. 

Peel  accepted  office,  but  he  judged  the  situation 
without  illusion,  and  clearly  saw  that  his  time  had  not 
yet  come.  There  was  a  great  majority  against  him  in 
the  Commons.  Stanley  and  the  other  Whig  seceders 
refused  to  join  him,  and  would  only  promise  a  benevo- 
lent and  conditional  neutrality.  The  English  press, 
however,  was  on  the  whole  favourable;  the  King  and 
the  House  of  Lords  were  ardent  supporters  of  the  new 
government,  and  the  '  Tamworth  manifesto,'  in  which 
Peel  announced  his  full  acceptance  of  the  Keform  Act 
as  a  final  and  irrevocable  settlement  of  a  great  constitu- 
tional question,  and  at  the  same  time  sketched  a  bold 
and  comprehensive  scheme  of  administrative  reform 
had  an  excellent  effect.  Parliament  was  dissolved,  and 
in  the  new  Parliament  which  met  in  February  1835,  it 
was  found  that  Peel,  though  still  in  a  minority,  had 
gained  nearly  100  seats.  The  Whig  party  had  lost 
much,  but  the  following  of  O'Connell  was  increased, 
and  with  more  than  sixty  followers  he  could  hold  the 
balance  of  power.  In  combination  with  the  English 
Eadicals  he  steadily  supported  the  Whig  party  in  con- 
stant opposition  to  the  Government  in  the  new  Parlia- 
ment. 

Defeat  after  defeat  showed  that  the  ministers  had 
no  control  over  the  House  of  Commons,  and  could  ex- 


DEFEAT  OF  PEEL,  APRIL  1835  155 

pect  no  respite  or  forbeai-ance  from  their  opponents, 
and  their  final  defeat,  which  took  place  in  April  1835, 
was  on  an  Irish  question,  and  on  one  which  took  for 
the  present  the  first  place  in  the  policy  of  O'Connell. 
He  had  for  the  moment  practically  put  aside  the  ques- 
tion of  repeal  to  concentrate  all  his  efforts  on  the  re- 
duction or  abolition  of  tithes.  Both  parties  in  the 
State  agreed  that  some  new  settlement  had  become  im- 
perative. During  three  or  even  four  years  in  many 
parts  of  Ireland  all  the  efforts  of  the  Government  had 
failed  to  collect  them,  and  though  the  immediate  wants 
of  the  clergy  had  been  met  by  a  Treasury  grant  of  a 
million,  it  was  evident  that  this  million  could  never  be 
repaid.  Both  English  parties  also  now  agreed  that 
tithes  could  only  be  maintained  by  converting  them 
into  a  land  tax  payable  by  the  landlords,  granting  them 
a  premium  for  what  was  called  their  collection,  but 
what  was  much  more  truly  an  acceptance  of  the  trans- 
fer of  the  burden. 

Shortly  before  the  fall  of  the  first  Melbourne  Min- 
istry a  scheme  was  put  forward  by  the  Government  for 
meeting  the  difficulty  by  revaluing  the  tithe  composi- 
tions under  Stanley's  Act,  reducing  the  sum  thus  ar- 
rived at  by  twenty  per  cent.,  and  converting  that  re- 
duced sum  into  a  land  tax  payable  by  the  landlord  and 
redeemable  at  fourteen  years'  purchase.  It  was  op- 
posed by  O'Connell,  who  declared  it  was  making  tithe 
proctors  of  the  landlords,  and  he  himself  brought  for- 
ward another  scheme  which  he  advocated  in  a  very  able 
speech,  the  moderation  of  which  was  warmly  recog- 
nised by  Stanley.'  He  proposed  that  one-fifth  of  the 
tithes  should  be  simply  abolished — that  one-fifth  should 
be  exchanged  for  a  payment  out  of  the  Consolidated 


»  See  Fagan,  ii.  300. 


156      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Fund — that  one- fifth  should  be  a  charge  redeemable  on 
inheritance,  and  that  the  remaining  two-fifths  should 
be  paid  by  the  occupiers  of  land/  To  this  plan  he 
added  that  the  surplus  after  satisfying  the  just  de- 
mands of  the  Establishment  should  be  appropriated  as 
Parliament  should  determine.  In  July  1834,  O'Connell 
succeeded  in  carrying  in  opposition  to  the  Government 
an  amendment  striking  off  two-fifths  of  the  tithes,  and 
the  Tithes  Bill,  thus  largely  modified,  passed  through 
the  Commons,  but  was  thrown  out  by  the  Lords  shortly 
before  the  downfall  of  the  ministry.' 

Peel  resolved  to  take  up  the  question  on  substan- 
tially the  same  lines,  but  without  any  diversion  of  the 
funds  of  the  Church  other  than  the  necessary  premium 
to  induce  the  landlords  to  accept  the  burden.  His 
plan  was  that  tithes  should  be  changed  into  a  land  tax 
payable  by  the  landlord,  with  a  diminution  of  the  nom- 
inal value  by  twenty-five  per  cent.  The  Whig  Opposi- 
tion chose  this  as  their  ground  of  battle,  and  Kussell 
moved  as  an  amendment  the  famous  Appropriation 
Clause,  affirming  that  any  surplus  revenues  of  the  Irish 
Church  not  required  for  the  religious  wants  of  the  Prot- 
estants should  be  applied  to  the  education  of  the  people 
at  large,  and  that  no  measure  concerning  tithes  would 
be  satisfactory  which  did  not  embody  this  principle. 
The  Government  were  defeated  by  majorities  of  33  and 
27.  Peel  retired  from  ofiBce,  and  Melbourne  became 
once  more  Prime  Minister. 

If  it  be  considered  as  a  mere  party  move,  there  has 
seldom  been  a  more  disastrous  mistake  than  that  of  the 
Whigs  in  bringing  forward  this  Appropriation  Clause, 
and  in  selecting  it  as  the  question  on  which  to  over- 


»  Hansard,  May  6,  1834,  p.  652. 

'  Hansard,  July 30,  Augustll,  1834.  Walpole's-Sits^iiii. 265-366. 


THE  APPROPRIATION  CLAUSE  REJECTED        157 

throw  the  first  feeble  ministry  of  Sir  K.  Peel.  At  the 
same  time,  there  never  was  a  more  loyal  or  moderate 
attempt  to  remedy  a  great  injustice.  Few  persons  will 
now  deny  that  the  Church  revenues  might  have  been 
justly  diminished,  or  that  an  application  of  a  portion 
of  them  to  the  benefit  of  the  whole  community  would 
have  strengthened  the  position  of  the  Church.  The 
ministry  of  Lord  Melbourne,  however,  soon  found  the 
task  they  had  undertaken  beyond  their  powers.  Lord 
J.  Eussell,  as  minister,  duly  brought  in  the  Clause  as 
a  portion  of  the  Bill  for  commuting  tithes,  but  although 
it  was  carried  through  the  House  of  Commons  it  was 
only  by  a  small  majority,  and  a  majority  of  the  Eng- 
lish members  were  against  the  Government.  The  vio- 
lence of  O'Connell,  who  supported  the  Appropriation 
Clause  with  passionate  zeal,  produced  a  strong  Con- 
servative reaction  in  England.  The  King  was  known 
to  be  opposed  to  the  policy  of  his  ministers,  and  the 
House  of  Lords  by  large  majorities  rejected  the  clause. 
In  the  meantime  the  tithes  question  continued  in  abey- 
ance, and  it  was  plain  that  until  it  was  settled  there 
could  be  no  real  peace  in  Ireland.  There  were  not 
wanting  those  who  urged  the  ministers,  as  the  sole 
means  of  carrying  their  Bill,  to  avail  themselves  of  the 
fierce  Radical  spirit  which  was  abroad,  and  which  de- 
manded the  subversion  of  the  House  of  Lords  or  its 
organic  change.  Happily,  however,  those  who  then 
guided  the  policy  of  England  were  deeply  and  fervently 
attached  to  the  Constitution.  Had  they  persevered,  a 
violent  revolutionary  spirit  might  have  arisen;  and,  by 
abandoning  the  Appropriation  Clause  in  1838,  they 
probably  saved  the  country  from  an  irretrievable  dis- 
aster at  the  cost  of  a  ruinous  party  humiliation. 

The  five  years  of  the  second  Melbourne  ministry 
exhibited  O'Connell  in  a  new  light.     Without  any  dis- 


158     LEADERS    OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tinct  or  formal  treaty  he  was  now  in  close  alliance  with 
the  ministry,  and  he  exerted  all  his  influence  to  sup- 
port it.  His  power  was  very  great,  for  the  united 
majority  of  Melbourne  was  little  more  than  ten,  and  of 
this  party  about  seventy  were  repealers.  The  govern- 
ment of  Ireland  was  now  placed  in  hands  which  were 
very  acceptable  to  O'Connell.  Lord  Mulgrave  (after- 
wards Marquess  of  Normanby)  became  Lord  Lieuten- 
ant, and  Lord  Morpeth  Chief  Secretary,  and  the  Under 
Secretary  was  Drummond,  who  had  already  won  a  con- 
siderable scientific  reputation,  and  who  now  proved 
himself  a  powerful  and  liberal  administrator.  They 
were  prepared  to  make  large  and  generous  concessions 
both  of  patronage  and  law  for  the  purposes  of  estab- 
lishing religious  equality,  as  far  as  this  was  compatible 
with  the  maintenance  of  the  Protestant  Establishment 
and  of  the  Legislative  Union.  O'Connell  was  on 
friendly  and  confidential  terms  with  them  all,  and  to 
the  great  indignation  of  the  Orange  party  was  invited 
to  dinner  at  the  Castle.  The  law  appointments,  to 
which  he  always  attached  a  special  importance,  were  in 
accordance  with  his  wishes  and  probably  largely  due  to 
his  suggestion.  Ilis  old  enemy  Blackburne  was  no 
longer  Attorney-General,  and  was  replaced  by  a  Protes- 
tant lawyer  named  Perrin,  who  had  long  been  recom- 
mended by  O'Connell  for  promotion,  while  the  Solicitor- 
General  was  O'Loughlin,  a  Catholic  lawyer  of  high 
character  and  considerable  attainments,  who  was  a 
warm  friend  of  O'Connell. 

It  is  tolerably  certain  that  O'Connell  was  largely 
consulted,  at  least  about  the  Irish  appointments,  and 
he  avowed  that  one  of  his  first  objects  was  a  complete 
exclusion  from  office  of  all  who  were  connected  with 
what  he  termed  *  the  Corporation  and  Orange  factions.' 
*  I  will  not  support  the  ministry  if  they  leave  in  place 


O'CONNELL  SUPPORTS  THE  MINISTRY  159 

or  power  one  of  them.  They  must  all  go.  Not  one 
of  them  can  be  tolerated  as  an  instrument  of  govern- 
ment. As  to  Blackburne,  Hartley  and  that  gang,  out 
they  go  !  Do  not  credit  the  possibility  of  any  one  of 
them  remaining  in  office.'  His  forecast  of  the  prospect 
of  the  Government  shovrs  that  curious  want  of  pre- 
science, largely  due  to  an  extremely  sanguine  disposition 
which  he  often  displayed.  ^  Not  only  is  there  no  ap- 
pearance of  a  Tory  reaction,  but  it  is  believed  that  Peel 
has  actually  declared  that  lie  gives  up  that  party  for 
ever.  There  is  some  truth  in  the  report.  The  party 
are  down  I  do  believe  for  ever;  but  they  must  be  ex- 
cluded rigidly  in  Ireland,  or  nothing  is  done.'  ^ 

With  O'Connell's  commanding  power  among  the 
supporters  of  Government,  he  might,  if  he  pleased, 
have  put  forward  a  strong  claim  to  office,  and,  although 
he  was  not  eager  in  pushing  his  claims,  he  does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  altogether  averse  to  it.  *  You  may 
be  convinced,'  he  wrote  to  Fitzpatrick,  '  that  I  will  not 
accept  office  of  any  kind  without  distinct  pledges.  Nor 
is  there  any  office  I  should  accept  save  Attorney-General 
or  Secretary  for  Ireland. '  It  appears  that  the  ministry 
were  at  this  time  desirous  of  offering  him  the  first  of 
those  posts,  but  the  negotiations  broke  down,  probably 
on  account  of  the  opposition  of  the  King.  It  would, 
indeed,  have  been  a  bold  step  to  confide  the  most  im- 
portant place  in  the  legal  administration  of  Ireland  to 
a  man  who  had  been  so  recently  the  object  of  a  State 
prosecution,  whose  proceedings  had  been  denounced  in 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.   12.      This  sation  was  very  Conservative, 

was  written  April  14,  1835.    It  with  a  conviction  that  the  dif- 

is  curious  to  observe  that  only  Acuities  of  the  Melbourne  Gov- 

a  week  later  Sir  H.  Hardinge  ernment  were  so  great  that  it 

reported  to  Peel  the  views  of  can  hardly  outlive  the  Session.' 

Sir  J.  Graham.     *  His  conver-  Peel's  Correspondence,  ii.  313. 


160      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

more  than  one  Kings'  speech,  whose  whole  career  had 
been  that  of  constant  and  skilful  evasion  of  the  law, 
and  who  had  used  the  language  which  O'Connell  had 
quite  recently  used  about  the  men  and  the  party  who 
were  now  in  power.  O'Connell  bore  very  good- 
humouredly  his  exclusion.  ^  I  understand,'  he  wrote, 
'  the  King  made  a  personal  objection  to  my  being  in 
power.  Heaven  help  the  worthy  old  gentleman  !  As 
if  the  way  to  give  me  power  was  not  to  keep  me  out  of 
office. '  He  was,  however,  offered,  but  at  once  refused, 
the  post  of  Master  of  the  Rolls.' 

Lord  Melbourne  very  formally  denied  that  the  sup- 
port of  O'Connell  had  been  purchased  by  any  terms" 
whatever.  This  was  no  doubt  literally  true,  but  O'Con- 
nell knew  well  the  dispositions  of  those  to  whom  the 
principal  posts  in  Ireland  were  entrusted,  and  he  was 
fully  aware  that  the  ministers  were  determined  to  deal 
with  at  least  two  of  the  questions  which  he  deemed 
most  important — the  tithe  system  and  the  reform  of 
the  Irish  muncipalities.  It  has  been  generally  admitted 
that  he  showed  at  this  time,  and  indeed  through  the 
whole  of  this  ministry,  a  great  disinterestedness  in  per- 
sonal matters — waiving  all  claims  to  office  for  himself, 
putting  forward  no  claims  for  his  family,  and  showing 
himself  on  nearly  all  occasions  eminently  conciliatory. 
I  have  myself  heard  Lord  Russell  bear  testimony  to 
this,  and  remarking  on  the  great  contrast  O'Connell  in 
this  respect  bore  to  Brougham. 

I  have  already  quoted  the  judgment  Greville  formed 
of  O'Connell  when  he  first  appeared  in  London  after 
his  great  triumph  in  1829.  A  year  later,  when  he  had 
some  experience    of    his    parliamentary   attitude,   he 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  9-11.     See  too  Torrens's  Life  of  Melbourne, 
ii.  120-122. 
'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  5. 


GREVILLE'S  JUDGMENTS  OF  O'CONNELL  161 

formed  a  much  less  favourable  judgment  of  his  charac- 
ter, though  not  of  his  abilities.  He  said  O'Connell 
had  *  a  moral  power  and  influence  as  great  in  its  way 
and  as  strangely  acquired  as  Bonaparte's  political  power 
was.'  He  believed  him,  however,  to  be  shameless,  un- 
truthful, infinitely  dexterous,  versatile,  even  prudent, 
and  he  added  that  he  was  becoming  popular  with  thelower 
Protestants.  He  was  leading  a  mob,  but  the  better  sort 
of  mob — formidable  and  well  organised.  No  one  of 
respectability  joined  him.^  In  1838,  after  some  years' 
experience  of  the  alliance  with  Melbourne,  Greville  was 
convinced  that  O'Connell's  motives  were  really  good, 
and  that  he  was  desirous  of  aiding  compromise  and 
pacifying  Ireland.  He  speaks  warmly  of  his  moderate 
and  disinterested  conduct  when  he  declined  the  Master- 
ship of  the  Rolls,  and  says,  *  Lord  Tavistock,  who  told 
me  this,  says  no  one  could  behave  better  than  he  has 
done  about  it,  and  he  gives  him  credit  (as  the  whole 
party  do)  for  sincerity  and  purity  of  motive.' '  Greville 
thought  that  O'Connell  would  probably  end  his  career 
as  Chief  Justice.  O'Connell  would  himself  have  pre- 
ferred political  office,  and  the  dream  even  crossed  his 
mind  that  he  would  soon  sit  in  the  Cabinet,  with  the 
direction  of  Irish  affairs  officially  committed  to  him." 

O'Connell,  once  he  had  resolved  to  support  the 
Government,  acted  with  his  usual  courage  and  decision, 
and  with  the  complete  disregard  for  all  charges  of  in- 
consistency which  he  always  showed  when  there  was 
some  considerable  practical  object  to  be  gained.  He 
who  had  so  lately  almost  exhausted  the  language  of  in- 
vective in  his  abuse  of  the  Whig  Government  and  party, 
now  issued  a  manifesto  to  the  Irish  people  avowing 
himself  *  the  determined  supporter  of  the  administra- 

*  Greville  Memoirs,  ii.  103,  109. 

"  Ibid.  iv.  106.     See  too  Fagan,  ii.  360.     "  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  38. 

VOL.  n.  H 


162      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tion.'  'To  the  King's  ministers/  he  said,  ^I  have 
tendered  my  unbought,  unpurchasable,  unconditional 
support.  I  have  neither  made  terms  nor  stipulations 
with  them.  It  suffices  me  that  their  political  princi- 
ples are  all  identified  with  the  cause  of  good  govern- 
ment and  of  justice  to  the  loved  land  of  my  birth.  The 
tranquillity,  the  prosperity,  the  liberty  of  Ireland  also 
appears  to  me  identified  with  the  maintenance  in  power 
of  the  present  ministry.' ' 

It  is  an  extraordinary  proof  of  his  power  over  the 
Catholic  democracy,  and  of  their  unbounded  confidence 
in  his  judgment  and  his  integrity,  that  he  was  able  to 
carry  with  him  the  great  body  of  his  political  supporters 
both  within  and  without  Parliament  in  this  sudden 
change.  There  was  no  doubt  some  discontent.  Sus- 
picions were  sometimes  breathed,  and  O'Connell  gave 
it  as  one  of  his  reasons  for  declining  office  that  they 
might  have  been  strengthened  if  he  did  anything  giv- 
ing his  conduct  the  appearance  of  a  bargain;  but  he 
was  completely  successful  in  carrying  with  him  a  dis- 
ciplined and  united  party  in  support  of  the  Govern- 
ment. Still  more  wonderful  was  his  success  in  induc- 
ing them  to  put  aside  that  agitation  for  repeal  which 
appeared  the  very  mainspring  of  his  popularity.  He 
now  announced  that,  provided  the  Imperial  Parliament 
would  do  justice  to  Ireland,  he  was  prepared  to  aban- 
don repeal.  He  even  said  that  his  only  reason  for  being 
a  repealer  was  the  injustice  of  the  government  of  Ire- 
land, and  that  he  would  rather  see  justice  done  to  his 
countrjmien  by  an  Im^^erial  Parliament  than  by  a  local 
legislature.^  If  the  present  Government  would  place 
Protestants  and  Catholics  on  terms  of  real  equality,  if 
they  would  redress  the  flagrant  grievances  of  the  coun- 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  6.        "^  Cusack,  Speeches  of  O'Connell,  i.  308. 


TEMPORARY  ABANDONMENT  OF  REPEAL         163 

try  and  encourage  agriculture  and  manufactures,  lie 
was  prepared  to  give  them  an  unqualified  support. 
*Tlie  true  ground  to  take/  he  said,  ^  is  Ireland  upon 
an  equality  with  G-reat  Britain,  or  no  Union.  In  other 
words,  a  "  real  Union  "  or  '^  no  Union."  Let  this  be 
our  cry,  and  every  honest  man  in  England  and  in  Scot- 
land will  join  in  the  shout.' '  In  one  of  his  speeches  in 
Ireland  he  said  that  after  Catholic  Emancipation  had 
been  achieved.  Parliament  showed  every  disposition  to 
put  all  Irish  questions  aside  and  pay  little  or  no  atten- 
tion to  them.  '  I  then,'  he  said,  *  took  up  repeal  and, 
like  the  Flappers  we  read  of  it  "  Gulliver's  Travels,"  I 
rattled  it  about  their  ears.  The  result  is  that  the  atten- 
tion of  Government  is  almost  entirely  engrossed  with 
the  affairs  of  Ireland. ' 

He  took  the  people  on  this  question  fully  into  his 
confidence,  and  in  a  series  of  popular  meetings  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  Ireland,  held  in  1836,  he  declared  his  inten- 
tion of  testing  the  Union,  and  he  called  upon  great 
audiences  to  say  whether  they  authorised  him  to  an- 
nounce that  if  a  United  Parliament  did  justice  to  Ire- 
land the  repeal  agitation  should  be  abandoned.  With 
any  other  public  man  such  a  course  would  have  been 
dangerous  in  the  extreme,  but  O'Connell  could  play  on 
a  popular  Irish  audience  like  a  great  musician  on  his 
instrument,  eliciting  what  tone  and  what  response  he 
pleased,  and  on  these  occasions  no  murmur  of  dissent 
appears  to  have  been  heard.  In  one  of  these  speeches 
he  said  that  he  honestly  confessed  his  disbelief  that  the 
United  Parliament  would  do  what  he  desired,  but  he 
said,  '  I  want  to  make  the  experiment  of  going  to  them 
with  the  authority  of  the  Irish  people  and  saying  tliat 
I  am  desired  to  state  that  they  will  give  up  the  agita- 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  59. 


184      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tion  of  repeal  upon  one  condition,  and  upon  one  con- 
dition only — that  of  having  justice  done  to  Ireland.' 
*  The  people  of  Ireland  are  ready  to  become  a  portion 
of  the  Empire,  provided  they  be  made  so  in  reality  and 
not  in  name  alone;  they  are  ready  to  become  a  kind  of 
West  Britons  if  made  so  in  benefits  and  in  justice;  but 
if  not,  we  are  Irishmen  again.'*  'This  is  the  most 
happy  period  to  work  out  the  experiment.  Ireland  is 
now  ready  to  amalgamate  with  the  entire  Empire.  "We 
are  prepared  for  full  and  perpetual  conciliation.  Let 
Cork  county  and  Yorkshire  be  put  on  a  footing — let 
Ireland  and  England  be  identified.  But  for  this  pur- 
pose equality — perfect  equality  of  rights,  laws  and  lib- 
erties— is  essentially  necessary.  We  desire  no  more,  we 
will  not  take  less :  a  real  effectual  Union  or  no  Union 
— such  is  the  alternative. '  ^ 

This  language  is  sufficiently  clear,  and  it  was  a  hard 
saying  to  many  of  his  followers.  The  class  of  mind 
which  ultimately  developed  into  the  Young  Ireland 
movement,  and  also  some  intimate  friends  of  O'Con- 
nell,  such  as  O'Neill  Daunt,  who  never  became  Young 
Irelanders,  resented  bitterly  the  abandonment  of  repeal, 
and  the  confession  that  it  was  urged  as  a  means  and 
not  as  in  itself  an  end.  In  a  very  characteristic  letter 
to  Fitzpatrick,  to  whom  he  usually  confided  his  inmost 
feelings,  O'Connell  defended  his  course.  Fitzpatrick 
appears  to  have  written  to  him  that,  if  he  was  deter- 
mined to  waive  the  repeal  question,  he  had  better  ab- 
stain as  much  as  possible  from  public  meetings  and 
exhibitions.  O'Connell  replied,  'I  totally  disagree 
with  you.  I  have  no  apprehension  of  unruly  repealers. 
I  should  desire  to  give  them  a  public  opportunity  of 
discussing  their  views  in  contrast  with  mine.     I  am  as 


'  Fagin,  ii.  490-496.  'Fitzpatrick,  ii.  105. 


MUNICIPAL  REFORM  165 

much  a  repealer  as  ever  I  was,  but  I  see  the  absolute 
necessity  of  confuting  those  who  say  we  prevented  the 
Union  from  having  a  fair  trial  in  the  hands  of  a  friendly 
ministry,  and  also  of  giving  a  decisive  check  to  Orange- 
ism.  The  scoundrel  Orangemen — always  enemies  to 
Ireland — now  place  all  their  claims  to  English  and  Gov- 
ernment support  on  their  being  the  real  opponents  to 
the  repeal,  which  they  call,  ''the  dismemberment  of 
the  Empire.'^  I  have  two  objects — to  overthrow  the 
Orange  system,  and  to  convince  the  most  sceptical  that 
nothing  but  a  domestic  Parliament  will  do  Ireland  jus- 
tice. With  these  views  of  the  present  aspect  of  affairs 
the  sooner  I  come  before  the  Irish  public  the  better.  I 
know  the  magic  of  being  right.  I  never  saw  that  w^hich 
was  founded  on  common  sense  defeated  at  a  public 
meeting.      Common   sense   sanctions   and   directs   my 

present  course I  will,  therefore,  attend  every 

public  meeting  and  every  public  dinner  I  possibly 
can.'  * 

Three  measures  of  capital  importance  relating  to 
Ireland  were  carried  by  the  Melbourne  ministry,  though 
not  exactly  in  the  form  which  O'Connell  desired.  The 
one  to  which  he  attached  most  importance  was  the 
opening  of  the  municipalities.  This  measure  was  pre- 
ceded by  municipal  reform  in  Scotland  and  England, 
about  which  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  O'Connell 
gave  the  ministers  powerful  and  efficacious  assistance 
in  carrying  it.  The  extension  of  municipal  self-govern- 
ment to  Ireland,  however,  encountered  much  greater 
obstacles.  The  existing  corporations  of  the  great  towns 
found,  indeed,  few  defenders.  They  appear  to  have 
had  all  the  vices  that  spring  from  a  close  monopoly. 
By  a  law  they  had  been  open  to  Catholics  since  1793, 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  19-20. 


166      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IPvELAND 

but  they  were  self -elected  bodies  and  they  remained  in 
consequence  exclusively  Protestant,  and  they  had  at 
the  same  time  the  worst  reputation  for  corrupt  jobbery. 
Not  a  single  Catholic  had  sat  in  the  Corporation  of 
Dublin,  though  it  had  been  open  to  them  for  forty 
years,  and  it  was  a  centre  of  ultra-Tory  and  ultra- 
Protestant  politics. 

The  Government  desired  to  extend  to  Ireland  the 
municiiDal  franchises  that  were  granted  to  England,  but 
in  the  eyes  both  of  Wellington  and  Peel  such  a  course 
seemed  very  dangerous.  A  phrase  attributed  to  O'Con- 
nell  that  the  reformed  municipalities  would  jirove  ^  nor- 
mal schools  of  agitation  ^  was  often  repeated.  It  was 
felt  that  a  new  political  force  or  instrument  would  be 
called  into  being,  and  it  was  feared  that  it  would  fall 
wholly  under  his  direction.  Both  Wellington  and  Peel 
believed  that  there  was  too  much  evidence  of  malversa- 
tion and  misgovernment  to  make  the  defence  of  the 
existing  corporations  possible ;  but  they  maintained  that 
the  wisest  course  would  be  to  abolish  without  replacing 
them,  vesting  their  former  powers  in  the  Crown.  They 
desired  that  all  persons  concerned  in  the  nomination  of 
juries,  in  the  administration  of  justice,  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  police  should  be  appointed  by  the  Crown 
rather  than  by  local  authorities.^ 

The  House  of  Lords,  which  was  now  largely  dom- 
inated by  Lyndhurst,  adopted  this  view,  and  in  1836 
changed  the  Government  Bill  for  reforming  the  Irish 
municipalities  into  a  Bill  for  their  complete  abolition. 
The  House  of  Commons  by  a  majority  of  64  rejected 
the  amendment  of  the  Lords,  but  the  Tipper  House  re- 
fused to  yield  and  the  Bill  was  lost  for  that  year. 

The  House  of  Commons  carried  the  Bill  again,  and 


*  See  Peel's  Correspondence,  ii.  322-324. 


IRISH  MUNICIPAL  REFORM  167 

by  increased  majorities,  in  1837,  but  the  opposition  to 
it  was  now  considerably  divided.  Stanley  and  Graham 
refused  to  support  the  policy  of  Lyndhurst,  and  the 
establishment  of  a  new  inequality  between  Ireland  and 
Great  Britain  was  distasteful  to  many  of  the  regular 
supporters  of  Peel.  Several  of  the  Irish  Conservative 
members,  it  was  noticed,  abstained  from  voting,  and 
Peel  adopted  that  medium  course  which  was  nearly 
always  most  congenial  to  him.  He  opposed  the  Gov- 
ernment Bill  in  division  after  division  in  the  Commons, 
where  he  was  certain  to  be  beaten,  but  he  would  not 
allow  Lyndhurst  to  throw  it  out  on  the  second  reading 
in  the  Lords.  The  Government  clearly  intimated  that 
if  the  House  of  Lords  again  took  this  course  they  would 
throw  up  office,  leaving  a  Tory  ministry  to  face  the  situ- 
ation. O'Connell,  in  powerful  and  menacing  speeches, 
declared  that  he  was  perfectly  willing  to  carry  out  his 
experiment  of  obtaining  justice  to  Ireland  without  re- 
peal, but  that  one  or  other  of  these  two  things  the  Irish 
people  were  determined  to  have,  and  that  there  could 
be  no  justice  without  a  real  identification  of  the  inter- 
ests of  the  two  countries;  a  genuine  assimilation  or 
equality  of  institutions  and  privileges.  Wellington  suc- 
ceeded, however,  by  dilatory  tactics  in  postponing  the 
Committee  stage  of  the  Bill  till  it  was  too  late  to  carry 
it  in  1837.  The  accession  of  Queen  Victoria  in  1838, 
and  the  dissolution  that  followed,  furnished  new 
grounds  for  postponement.  It  was  again  defeated  in 
the  Lords  in  1839,  and  it  was  not  till  1840  that  this 
question  was  finally  settled. 

It  was  settled  like  most  great  controversies  in  Eng- 
lish politics  by  a  compromise.  The  idea  of  conferring 
municipal  institutions  on  the  smaller  Irish  towns  was 
abandoned,  but  in  the  more  important  towns  municipal 
government  was  established  on  the  basis  of  a  10/.  fran- 


168      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

chise.  O'Connell  became  the  first  Lord  Mayor  of  the 
reformed  Corporation  of  Dublin.  His  election  was  re- 
ceived with  extraordinary  enthusiasm,  and  occasioned 
among  his  followers  much  rather  vulgar  and  paltry 
glorification,  to  which  O'Connell  appears  to  have  read- 
ily lent  himself,  but  he  discharged  the  duties  of  his 
office  with  scrupulous  impartiality,  and  with  great 
industry  and  tact. 

The  opening  of  the  municipalities,  though  so  long 
delayed,  was  at  least  a  great  triumph  for  O'Connell. 
The  tithe  question  was  also  settled,  but  on  lines  which 
were  very  displeasing  to  him.  The  Appropriation 
Clause,  he  once  said,  was  worth  all  the  rest  of  the  Gov- 
ernment measures  together,  and  he  supported  it  in  the 
House  of  Commons  with  all  his  power.  It  now  took 
the  form  of  a  resolution  that  any  surplus  revenue  of 
the  present  Church  Establishment  in  Ireland  which 
was  not  required  for  the  spiritual  needs  of  its  members 
should  '  be  applied  to  the  moral  and  religious  educa- 
tion of  all  classes  of  the  people  without  distinction  of 
religious  persuasion,'  and  there  was  even  a  proviso  that 
this  surplus  might  be  resumed  if  through  the  increas- 
ing number  of  Churchmen  its  present  revenues  became 
insufficient.^  Hardly  anyone  looking  back  through  the 
cold  light  of  history  will  now  doubt  that  the  Whig 
Appropriation  Clause  was  just,  moderate,  and  politic. 
But  on  this  subject  the  House  of  Lords  proved  inflex- 
ible. Three  times  it  passed  the  Commons,  and  three 
times  it  was  rejected  by  the  Lords,  leaving  Ireland  still 
convulsed  by  the  anarchy  of  the  tithe  war. 

At  last,  in  1838,  the  Government,  despairing  of 
overcoming  the  resistance  of  the  House  of  Lords  at  a 
time  when  their  own  majority  in  the  Commons  de- 


"■  Cusack,  i.  518-519. 


TITHE  COMMUTATION   ACT,   1838  169 

pended  upon  the  Irish  vote,  and  when  the  majority  of 
the  British  members  were  against  them,  dropped  the 
Appropriation  Clause  and  carried  the  Tithes  Commu- 
tation Act  in  the  form  in  which  it  had  been  originally 
proposed  by  Peel.  Twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  nom- 
inal amount  of  tithes  was  struck  off,  and  the  remainder 
turned  into  a  land  tax  payable  by  the  owners  of  the 
soil. 

By  this  law  the  burden  of  tithes  was  removed  from 
the  Irish  peasants,  who  were  nearly  all  Catholics,  and 
imposed  on  the  landlords,  who  were  nearly  all  Protes- 
tants. It  was  contended  by  some  political  economists 
that  the  change  would  give  no  real  relief,  as  the  burden 
that  was  transferred  to  the  landlord  would  be  met  by  a 
corresponding  increase  in  rents.  But  this,  like  all  sim- 
ilar conclusions  of  political  economy,  is  true  only  in  as 
far  as  land  is  dealt  with  simply  and  rigidly  on  commer- 
cial principles,  and  in  Ireland,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
has  not  generally  been  let  by  the  owner  at  the  extreme 
competitive  price.  Of  this  fact  the  almost  universal 
practice  of  sub-letting  at  an  increased  rent,  and  the 
great  place  which  the  middlemen  occupy  in  Irish 
agrarian  history  are  decisive  proofs. 

The  Irish  landlords  readily  assumed  the  burden  in 
consideration  of  the  land  tax  being  applied  to  the  sup- 
port of  their  own  Church,  and  in  addition  to  this  moral 
reason  there  was  an  economical  one  which  sufficiently 
prevented  them  from  raising  rents.  Land  in  Ireland 
was  subdivided  into  minute  fractions,  and  it  was  not 
worth  while  disturbing  rentals  by  adding  a  few  pence 
to  each  cottier's  farm.  In  numerous  cases  which  have 
been  brought  before  the  Land  Commission  under  the 
Acts  of  1881  and  1887  it  has  been  shown  that  rents 
have  remained  unaltered  since  dates  prior  to  1838,  and 
there  is,  I  believe,  no  evidence  that  the  Tithe  Commu- 


170      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tation  Act  was  followed  by  any  general  increase  of 
rents.  The  Protestant  Church  remained  in  Ireland  an 
established  and  a  privileged  body,  but  it  could  no 
longer  be  truly  said  to  be  supported  by  the  contribu- 
tions of  a  Catholic  majority.  Except  in  the  case  of  the 
small  body  of  Catholic  gentry,  this  grievance  was  sub- 
stantially removed.  When  the  Church  was  disestab- 
lished and  disendowed  no  voice  outside  the  landlord 
class  was  raised  in  favour  of  simply  abolishing  the  land 
tax,  although  that  tax  was  said  to  have  been  in  reality 
paid  by  the  tenants,  and  although  there  is  little  doubt 
that  the  majority  of  them,  if  they  had  been  consulted 
in  1835,  would  have  voted  for  the  simple  abolition  of 
tithes. 

The  tithes  composition  measure  had  the  disadvan- 
tage of  being  conceded,  like  most  Irish  measures,  to 
violence,  and  it  has  not  proved  a  final  arrangement. 
Subject  to  these  qualifications,  however,  it  deserves  the 
highest  praise.  Few  laws  have  ever  been  so  completely 
successful  in  eradicating  a  great  source  of  crime  and 
allaying  dangerous  agitation.  The  Protestant  clergy, 
constituting  a  class  of  resident  and  well-conducted 
country  gentry,  where  such  a  class  was  peculiarly 
needed,  have,  when  they  have  abstained  from  active 
proselytising,  been  in  general  both  useful  and  popular, 
and  the  signal  devotion  which  they  manifested  amid 
the  horrors  of  the  famine  obtained  for  them  a  large 
measure  of  well-earned  gratitude.  Since  the  abolition 
of  the  tithes,  in  the  worst  periods  of  Irish  crime  and  in 
the  worst  localities,  they  have  almost  invariably  been 
unmolested  and  unmenaced,  and  probably  few  great 
measures  have  excited  less  genuine  enthusiasm  in  Ire- 
land than  the  English  measure  for  disendowing  them. 

O'Connell  belonged  to  the  small  class  of  Irish  Catho- 
lic landlords  who  had  an  especial  reason  to  complain  of 


TITHE  COMMUTATION  ACT,  1838  171 

the  new  tax  that  was  thrown  upon  them,  and  the  total 
diversion  of  the  tithe  charge  from  the  Establishment 
to  secular  purposes  was  one  of  the  objects  nearest  to  his 
heart.  It  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that  he  was 
much  mortified  at  finding  the  tithes  turned  into  a  per- 
manent land  charge  for  the  benefit  of  the  Established 
Church.  He  had  hopes  that  it  might  be  diverted  to 
other  purposes,  but  he  clearly  saw  that  the  feeling  on 
the  subject  had  gone  down,  and  that  the  Catholic  peas- 
antry now  felt  themselves  relieved  and  untouched.  He 
was  also  very  anxious  to  keep  the  Government  in  power, 
and  he  was  sincerely  desirous  of  calming  the  anti-tithe 
agitation.  He  publicly  announced  that,  having  him- 
self resisted  the  payment  of  tithes  during  five  years,  he 
had  now  paid  them,  and  had  done  so  because  he  wished 
to  give  an  example  to  his  co-religionists,  and  he  not 
only  acquiesced  in  the  abandonment  of  the  Appropri- 
ation Clause,  but  appears  to  have  actually  advised  it 
some  time  before  the  English  ministers  were  prepared 
for  it.'  He  had  taken  the  same  course  on  the  question 
of  the  Irish  Corporations.  As  long  as  the  ministers  re- 
sisted the  amendments  of  the  Lords  he  supported  them 
with  all  his  force,  but  he  appears  to  have  privately  rec- 
ommended an  earlier  and  more  complete  submission 
than  they  would  consent  to.'  He  was,  in  truth,  in  his 
later  career  eminently  an  opportunist — always  anxious 
to  secure  some  tangible  benefit,  rather  than  risk  it  in 
hopes  of  gaining  something  more,  and  the  violence  of 
his  language  sometimes  masked  a  policy  essentially 
moderate  and  even  timid.  Sharman  Crawford  bitterly 
reproached  him  with  acquiescing  in  an  imperfect  settle- 
ment of  the  tithe  question  and  urged  an  uncompromis- 
ing resistance.     O'Connell,  however,  used  his  influence 


*  OrevilU  Memoirs,  v.  134-135  '  Ibid. 


172      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

in  the  opposite  direction,  and  the  agitation  which  had 
been  of  late  so  formidable  speedily  disappeared/ 

A  third  great  measure  relating  to  Ireland  which  was 
carried  by  the  Melbourne  Ministry  was  the  Irish  poor 
law,  making  the  support  of  the  destitute  poor  a  charge 
on  Irish  land,  and  at  the  same  time  establishing  a  work- 
house test.  On  this  question  the  attitude  of  O'Connell 
is  very  remarkable.  The  whole  body  of  the  Catholic 
episcopacy  appear  to  have  been  in  its  favour,  and 
Bishop  Doyle  wrote  with  great  force  in  support  of  the 
principles  of  the  Bill.  The  gigantic  evictions  or  '  clear- 
ances '  that  had  lately  been  going  on  made  the  question 
one  of  vital  importance.  The  greater  part  of  Ireland 
was  covered  with  a  pauper  tenantry:  multitudes  of 
them  squatters  on  the  soil;  others  small  labourers  to 
whom  the  farmers  sub-let  fractions  of  land  in  the  form 
of  con-acre — that  is,  with  the  obligation  of  working  out 
their  exorbitant  rent  in  the  form  of  labour  valued  at 
probably  not  more  than  6d.  a  day.  With  the  immense 
over-population  of  agricultural  land  that  had  grown  up 
since  the  Union,  and  under  the  influence  of  the  various 
causes  I  have  already  described,  a  great  removal  of 
population  had  become  inevitable.  But  under  the  con- 
acre system  the  small  cottier  had  no  money.  He  lived 
only  on  the  produce  of  the  little  plot  of  land  from 
which  he  was  ejected. 

In  England  a  great  consolidation  of  farms  had  some- 
times been  effected,  and  it  was  necessarily  followed  by  a 
displacement  of  population.  In  the  Tudor  days  this 
had  taken  place  on  a  large  scale  and  produced  terrible 
distress,  and  one  of  its  results  had  been  the  poor  law 
of  Elizabeth.  The  great  Sutherland  evictions  towards 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  transformed  the 


^  See  Fagan,  ii.  579. 


THE  IRISH  POOR  LAW  173 

character  of  a  large  portion  of  the  Highlands  of  Scot- 
land, but  they  took  place  almost  entirely  on  the  prop- 
erty of  a  single  very  wealthy  nobleman,  who  devoted 
during  several  years  an  immense  proportion  of  his  in- 
come to  settling  his  former  tenantry  in  Canada,  where 
they  soon  became  far  more  prosperous  than  they  could 
ever  have  been  on  the  barren  soil  from  which  they  had 
been  expelled.  The  great  fall  of  prices  that  followed 
the  peace  of  1815  had  produced  serious  agrarian  dis- 
turbances in  England,  but  the  agricultural  population 
in  England  was  proportionately  far  smaller  than  in 
Ireland,  and  the  redundant  portion  was  speedily  ab- 
sorbed in  the  flourishing  and  rapidly  increasing  manu- 
facturing towns  that  studded  the  land.  Ireland  had 
no  such  resources;  her  population  was  far  more  purely 
agricultural  than  in  England,  and  the  necessity  for 
some  legal  provision  for  the  poor  seemed  much  more 
imperative. 

An  influence  of  another  kind  also  strengthened  the 
feeling  in  favour  of  an  Irish  poor  law.  The  great  over- 
flow of  unemployed  Irish  pauperism  into  England 
had  begun.  Irish  labourers  and  Irish  ejected  tenants 
streamed  there  in  thousands,  and  there  were  bitter 
complaints  that  they  were  lowering  both  the  wages  and 
the  habits  of  English  labourers  and  throwing  an  addi- 
tional burden  on  English  ratepayers.  Unless  Ireland 
could  be  made  to  support  her  own  poor  the  burden  was 
certain  to  increase,  and  this  was  a  considerable  motive 
of  the  poor  law  legislation.' 

O'Connell  did  not  absolutely  oppose  the  Irish  poor 
law,  nor  was  he  altogether  consistent  about  it.  Its 
great  popularity  and  the  strong  support  it  received 
from  the  Catholic  clergy  had  much  influence  upon  him, 

*  See  Peel's  Correspondence,  \i.  116-117. 


174       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

and  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Bishop  Doyle  he  even  said 
that  the  arguments  of  that  prelate  had  convinced  him 
of  the  necessity  of  a  compulsory  provision  for  the  desti- 
tute poor.^  On  other  occasions  he  acknowledged  that 
he  could  not  avoid  the  conclusion  that  some  legal  pro- 
vision for  the  poor  had  become  necessary,  but  he  looked 
upon  it  with  unconcealed  alarm  and  dislike.  Nor  was 
this  a  mere  transient  feeling.  He  afterwards  said  that, 
though  he  had  consented  to  support  the  poor  law  of 
Lord  Melbourne's  Government,  he  had  done  so  in  order 
to  satisfy  popular  feeling  in  Ireland  and  against  his 
own  convictions,  and  that  he  regretted  what  he  had 
done.'  He  had  read  and  thought  much  on  the  subject 
of  poor  laws,  and  it  was  one  on  which  he  felt  strongly. 
On  this  question  he  was  on  the  side  of  the  strictest 
economists.  He  contended  on  principle  that  no  one 
has  a  right  to  be  supported  by  the  industry  of  another 
■ — that  poor  laws  tend  to  lessen  the  capital  of  the  coun- 
try and  to  lower  wages,  and  that  with  the  immense  mass 
of  pauperism  in  Ireland  they  would  be  useless  unless 
they  amounted  to  absolute  confiscation.  He  wrote  with 
great  horror  about  '  that  most  destructive  of  all  experi- 
ments, employment  for  the  able-bodied  out  of  poor 
rates — just  as  if  poor  rates  increased  capital,  when  it 
only  distributes  it  in  a  different  and  less  economic  and 
less  sagacious  mode.  It  is  so  easy  to  be  benevolent  and 
humane  at  the  expense  of  others.' '  ^  Never,'  he  said, 
'  was  cant  more  conspicuous  than  in  the  cry  of  some  of 
our  poor  law-mongers,'  and  he  predicted  that  the  poor 
law  would  afford  less  relief  than  it  would  inflict  injury, 


'  Fitzpatrick,  Correspondence  on  the  subject ;    see  Fitzpat- 

of  O'Connell,  i.  251.     This  was  rick's  Life  of  Boyle,  i.  382;  ii. 

in  1831.     He  afterwards,  how-  364-372. 

ever,    had  a  somewhat  sharp  '  Fagan,  ii.  125,  618. 

controversy  with  Bishop  Doyle  '  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  52. 


SPEECH  ON  THE  POOR  LAW  175 

and  that  *  delusion  would  end  in  greater  misery  and 
more  dissatisfaction'/ 

Such  was  his  attitude  towards  the  poor  law  of  1838 
— an  Act  which  was  amended  in  1843  and  somewhat 
relaxed  in  184:7  to  meet  the  horrors  of  the  famine.  In 
its  earliest  form  it  was  carefully  limited,  as  might  have 
been  expected  from  a  ministry  which  had  very  recently 
effected  drastic  and  salutary  reforms  in  the  English 
poor  law.  It  divided  Ireland  into  130  unions,  each 
provided  with  a  workhouse  erected  by  a  loan  from  Im- 
perial funds.  No  right  of  relief  was  acknowledged; 
the  boards  of  guardians  were  simply  given  a  discretion- 
ary power  to  relieve  the  destitute,  but  only  in  the  work- 
houses. Lest  they  should  abuse  this  discretion,  a  power 
to  dissolve  them  was  vested  in  the  Poor  Law  Commis- 
sioners. The  cost  of  the  system  which  in  England 
was  thrown  primarily  on  the  occupiers  was  in  Ireland 
divided,  but  in  very  unequal  proportions.  In  the  case 
of  tenements  not  exceeding  4/.  a  year,  which  formed  an 
enormous  proportion  of  the  existing  tenements  of  Ire- 
land, the  whole  rate  was  thrown  on  the  landlord.  In 
the  case  of  tenements  of  a  higher  valuation,  it  was 
divided  equally  between  the  landlord  and  tenant. 

The  speech  of  O'Connell  on  the  subject  of  the  poor 
laws  on  April  28, 1837,  is  one  of  the  most  important  he 
ever  delivered,  and  no  one  can  read  it  without  beins: 
impressed  with  the  force  of  reasoning  and  the  wide 
range  of  knowledge  he  exhibited.  It  was  in  some 
respects  bitterly  anti-English.  He  drew  a  terrible  pic- 
ture— supported,  however,  by  much  evidence,  and  a 
few  years  later  largely  corroborated  by  the  Devon  Com- 
mission, of  the  amount  and  the  intensity  of  poverty  in 
Ireland,  and  he  attributed  it  solely  to  the  system  of 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  127. 


176       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

English  government.  It  was  due,  lie  said,  to  the  penal 
laws  which  for  nearly  a  century  condemned  the  Catho- 
lic population  to  abject  ignorance  by  forbidding  them 
education,  and  to  abject  poverty  by  prohibiting  them 
from  acquiring  landed  property  or  long  or  profitable 
leases,  thus  directly  discouraging  agricultural  industry, 
in  a  country  where  the  chief  forms  of  manufacturing 
industry  had  been  crushed  by  law.  *  For  a  full  cen- 
tury,' he  said,  *we  had  laws  requiring  the  people  to  be 
ignorant  and  punishing  them  for  being  industrious — 
laws  that  declared  the  acquisition  of  property  criminal 
and  subjected  it  to  forfeiture,  and  the  consequences  of 
a  system  of  that  kind  are  still  felt. ' 

To  this  and  to  the  enormous  absentee  drain  he  at- 
tributed the  poverty  of  Ireland.  He  denied  the  idleness 
which  all  impartial  judges  declared  to  be  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  characteristics  of  the  Irish  labourer. 
He  passed  in  silence  over  the  excessive  improvidence  of 
the  early  marriages,  the  minute  subdivision  of  land,  the 
constant  habit  of  sub-letting;  the  organised  agrarian 
crimes,  directed  mainly  against  the  improving  landlord 
and  tenant;  the  perpetual  insecurity  which  these  crimes 
produced,  and  which  effectually  checked  the  influx  of 
capital  into  Ireland.  He  spoke  in  glowing  terms  of  the 
natural  fertility  of  Ireland,  her  navigable  rivers,  her 
noble  harbours,  but  he  took  no  notice  of  the  capital  fact 
that  the  absence  of  coal  placed  an  insurmountable  bar 
in  the  way  of  Irish  manufacturers.  He  denied  that 
Irish  poverty  was  due  to  exorbitant  rents,  saying  that 
it  was  calculated  that  the  English  landlord  receives  fifty 
shillings  for  every  twenty  shillings  the  Irish  landlord 
gets,  but  he  did  not  notice  that  where  the  rent  exacted 
by  the  owner  of  the  soil  from  the  farmer  to  whom  he 
had  let  his  land  was  not  excessive,  rents  four  or  even 
five  times  as  high  as  that  which  was  received  by  the 


SPEECH  ON  THE  POOR  LAW  177 

landlord  were  often  exacted,  by  sub-letting  tenants, 
from  the  cultivator  of  the  soil.  He  even  denied  the 
patent  fact  of  the  excessive  competition  for  land  being 
a  leading  cause  of  Irish  poverty,  arguing  that  not  less 
than  567,441  heads  of  families  who  had  not  an  inch  of 
land  were  in  a  state  of  absolute  destitution.  The  over- 
whelming excess  of  agricultural  labourers  in  Ireland  in 
a  state  of  misery  was  the  most  characteristic  feature  of 
Irish  distress,  and  was  in  the  opinion  of  O'Connell 
equally  attributable  to  the  poverty  of  landlord  and  ten- 
ant. In  England,  he  said,  agricultural  wages  were 
from  eight  shillings  to  ten  shillings  a  week,  in  Ireland 
from  two  shillings  to  two  and  six-pence.  But  though 
these  labourers  were  not  strictly  tenants,  they  for  the 
most  part  lived  upon  the  soil,  their  labour  being  paid 
not  by  money  wages,  but  by  small  and  temporary  grants 
of  potato  land.  It  was  also,  he  maintained,  false  that 
the  great  increase  of  population  was  accountable  for  the 
distress.  Between  1821  and  1831  the  ratio  of  increase 
in  England  had  been  16  per  cent.,  in  Ireland  only  13 
per  cent. 

In  the  opinion  of  O'Connell,  any  attempt  to  relieve 
this  mass  of  poverty  by  a  poor-law  charge  would  be  an 
experiment  of  the  most  dangerous  kind.  He  examined 
with  great  knowledge  the  different  charitable  institu- 
tions that  existed  in  Ireland,  many  of  them  receiving 
grants  from  the  Imperial  Parliament.  In  Dublin  alone 
the  House  contributed  not  less  than  44,450^.  to  chari- 
table institutions,  and  he  showed  how  small  an  effect 
these  various  charities  had  in  dealing  with  the  vast  mass 
of  Irish  pauperism.  He  predicted  that  the  calculations 
of  the  Government  about  the  number  of  workhouses 
and  the  amount  of  relief  required  would  fall  far  short 
of  the  reality.  In  his  opinion  the  demands  of  the  in- 
tended poor  law  would  ultimately  absorb  a  full  third  if 

VOL.  II,  13 


178      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

not  a  half  of  the  rental  of  Ireland,  which  would  involve 
the  ruin  of  a  great  proportion  of  the  land-owners,  with 
the  inevitable  effect  of  still  further  reducing  the  wage 
fund  and  increasing  the  poverty  of  the  country.  In 
the  opposite  extreme  of  Irish  life  the  effect  would  be 
not  less  disastrous.  '  Every  man  rented  at  51.  a  year 
is  to  become  a  ratepayer.  This  will  include  every  man 
who  at  present  saves  himself  from  begging.  While 
you  are  taking  away  from  the  beggar  the  charity  he  at 
present  receives,  you  are  at  the  same  time  taking  from 
the  small  farmers  the  means  that  hitherto  prevented 
them  from  becoming  beggars  also.  At  present  there  is 
not  capital  enough  to  pay  for  labour  in  Ireland,  and 
is  not  every  shilling  levied  for  poor  rate  a  shilling  taken 
from  the  means  of  paying  the  wages  of  labour  ?  ' 

The  moral  effects  of  the  poor  law  he  feared  would 
be,  if  possible,  even  more  disastrous.  He  had  no  belief 
in  the  theory  that  it  would  tend  to  tranquillise  Ireland; 
he  pointed  to  the  terrible  anarchy  that  had  very  re- 
cently existed  in  England  itself  under  the  influence  of 
the  old  poor  law,  '  when  the  rural  districts  were  nightly 
illumined  by  the  torch  of  the  rustic  incendiary; '  and 
he  foretold  that  the  attempts  to  restrict  poor-law  relief, 
once  it  was  instituted,  and  to  enforce  the  workhouse 
test  would  become  a  new  source  of  irritation  and  exas- 
peration. He  did  not  believe  it  would  have  the  effect 
some  philanthropists  predicted  of  inducing  landlords 
to  take  greater  care  of  their  tenants  lest  they  should  be 
thrown  on  the  rates.  There  was  no  law  of  settlement 
in  the  Irish  poor-law  system,  and  without  such  a  law  it 
cannot  affect  the  landlord  in  that  way. 

'  It  was  the  union  and  not  the  landlord  who  would 
have  to  pay  for  the  support  of  the  poor  wherever  they 
are  found,  and  whatever  the  burden  of  the  landlord  it 
will  only  be  shared  by  him  in  common  with  his  neigh- 


SPEECH   ON  THE  POOR  LAW  179 

hours.'  At  the  same  time  he  said  he  did  not  ask  for  a 
law  of  settlement,  for  he  believed  that  it  would  produce 
evils  far  greater  than  any  it  would  cure.  The  idea 
which  some  seemed  to  entertain  of  making  labour  pro- 
ductive at  the  expense  of  a  poor  rate  he  believed  to  be 
absolute  folly.  '  To  me  it  seems  that  no  proposition 
has  been  so  fully  demonstrated  by  theory  and  practice 
as  this:  that  you  cannot  make  labour  productive  by 
means  of  any  fund  you  may  raise  for  the  purpose  where 
that  labour  has  not  been  rendered  productive  by  the 
enterprise  of  private  and  individual  speculation.' 

He  dreaded  the  effect  of  the  poor  law  in  diminish- 
ing or  destroying  the  kindly  and  charitable  feelings  for 
which  the  Irish  poor  were  pre-eminently  distinguished. 
Their  readiness  to  help  one  another  when  in  extreme 
distress,  their  strong  filial  and  parental  affection,  their 
habitual  consideration  for  all  of  kin  to  them  had  excited 
the  admiration  and  often  the  astonishment  of  those  who 
knew  them  well.  Was  this  likely,  O'Connell  asked,  to 
survive  the  poor-law  system  ?  In  Ireland  there  is 
*  around  the  poorest  and  most  destitute  class  a  broad 
margin  composed  of  men  who  are  not  actually  paupers, 
but  who  are  scarcely  able  by  dint  of  the  strongest  and 
most  incessant  exertions  to  eke  out  a  livelihood.'  How 
natural  would  it  be  under  such  conditions  *  for  a  son 
to  say,  "  Why  should  I  diminish  my  own  means  to  sup- 
port my  infirm  father  when  there  is  the  union  work- 
house to  receive  him  ?  Why  should  I  exhaust  myself 
with  labour  to  maintain  my  mother  when  there  is  the 
same  refuge  for  her?  Why  should  I  assist  my  blind 
cousin  or  lend  a  helping  hand  to  my  lame  uncle?  Is 
there  not  the  union  workhouse  to  receive  them?" 
This  is  only  a  natural  train  of  argument.  You  will 
deprive  the  Irish  poor  therefore  of  the  charity  they  at 
present  have ;  you  will  extinguish  in  their  bosoms  those 


180      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

kindly  feelings  and  generous  emotions  which  are  be- 
yond all  price,  and  3^011  will  reduce  them  to  the  same 
miserable  and  degraded  condition  out  of  which  you  are 
now  seeking  to  raise  a  considerable  proportion  of  your 
own  agricultural  poor.' 

At  the  same  time  he  frankly  acknowledged  that 
some  measure  of  poor  law  for  Ireland  had  become  in- 
evitable, and  that  the  strong  current  of  both  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  lay  opinion  favoured  it.  For  his  own  part  he 
believed  that  evil  should  be  grappled  with  in  other 
ways,  and  that  it  would  need  on  the  part  of  the  Im- 
perial Parliament  some  considerable  pecuniary  sacrifice 
— something  like  the  twenty  millions  that  had  recently 
been  voted  to  compensate  the  slave-owners  in  the  West 
Indies — something  like  the  cost  of  a  small  war.  Only 
by  such  means,  and  not  by  a  purely  Irish  tax,  could  a 
real  impression  be  made  on  that  mass  of  Irish  poverty 
for  which  British  rule  was  so  largely  responsible. 

Nor  did  O'Connell  shrink  from  specifying  the  rem- 
edies he  would  himself  prefer.  The  first  and  perhaps 
the  most  important  w^as  State-aided  emigration.  The 
removal  to  a  fertile  and  unoccupied  soil  of  a  large  pro- 
portion of  Irish  pauperism  would,  he  clearly  saw,  be 
the  greatest  of  benefits,  and  he  urged  that  the  Govern- 
ment should  take  possession  of  the  vast  tracts  of  waste 
and  unused  land  that  existed  in  Canada,  and  employ 
them  for  the  encouragement  of  emigration.  It  would 
enrich  the  Canadian  people  by  sending  out  to  them 
great  numbers  of  healthy,  able-bodied  labourers,  who 
were  much  required.  It  would  injure  no  one,  and  it 
would  merely  follow  a  precedent  which  had  been  suc- 
cessfully set  by  the  Government  of  the  United  States. 

The  second  remedy  was  a  considerable  expenditure 
on  public  works.  Such  expenditure,  he  admitted, 
should  be  undertaken  with  much  caution.     *  No  per- 


SPEECH  ON  THE  POOR  LAW  181 

manent  good  would  result  from  public  works  under- 
taken merely  for  the  purpose  of  giving  employment  for 
the  time.'  He  did  not  propose,  as  a  celebrated  states- 
man had  once  proposed  in  the  House,  to  dig  holes  one 
day  and  fill  them  up  the  next.  He  proposed  works  of 
enduring  utility,  the  construction  of  roads  and  means 
of  communication  through  mountains  and  bogs,  the 
drainage  of  land  when  the  capital  required  goes  beyond 
the  means  of  individuals  to  supply. 

The  third  remedy  was  one  which  would  not  directly 
cost  England  anything.  It  was  to  revert  to  the  policy 
which  had  been  already  carried  out  by  the  Plantagenets 
and  the  Tudors,  and  which  had  been  a  favourite  idea 
of  the  Irish  Parliament  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It 
was  the  imposition  of  a  heavy  tax  on  owners  of  Irish 
estates  who  did  not  live  half  the  year  at  least  in  Ireland. 
The  worst  feature  in  the  domestic  economy  of  Ireland, 
he  said,  is  that  the  greater  part  of  its  rental  is  spent 
abroad.  If  the  large  absentee  owners  did  not  wish  to 
live  in  Ireland  they  should  sell  their  estates.  A  sub- 
stantial absentee  tax  would  bring  more  permanent  relief 
to  the  Irish  poor  tlian  the  proposed  poor  law. 

He  concluded  his  speech  in  language  which  seems 
to  me  to  breathe  the  accent  of  most  genuine  sincerity. 
*  I  do  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  my  own  individual 
opinion  is  not  favourable  to  a  poor  law,  but  least  of  all 
is  it  favourable  to  such  a  law  as  this  which  you  propose 
to  give  to  Ireland.  I  would  implore  you,  before  the 
step  is  decisively  taken,  to  have  it  fully,  maturely  and 
deliberately  considered  in  all  its  bearings — to  give  noth- 
ing to  the  unholy  cry  of  those  who  hold  themselves  out 
as  the  especial  patrons  and  friends  of  the  poor,  because 
they  are  favourable  to  these  laws.  I  entreat  you  to 
yield  to  no  clamour  of  that  kind,  but  fully  and  maturely 
to  consider  the  Bill  in  every  stage.     Then,  be  the  result 


182      LEADERS   OF   PUBLIC   OPINION   IN  IRELAND 

what  it  may,  I  shall  feel  that  I  have  done  my  duty.  I 
have  not,  I  own,  moral  courage  enough  to  oppose  a 
poor  law  altogether.  I  yield  to  the  necessity  of  doing 
something;  but  I  am  not  deceitful  enough  to  prophesy 
that  you  will  reap  any  lasting  or  solid  advantage  from 
the  introduction  of  such  a  law  into  Ireland.' ' 

The  apprehension  with  which  O'Connell  regarded 
the  introduction  of  a  poor  law  into  Ireland  was  shared 
by  many  very  comjietent  judges.  Archbishop  Whately 
was  one  of  several  economists  who  pointed  out  with 
irresistible  force  the  extreme  dangers  of  any  lax  admin- 
istration of  poor  relief  in  Ireland.  He  had  been  a  lead- 
ing member  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission  which  had 
presented  in  1836  a  terrible  picture  of  the  destitution 
of  Ireland,  showing  that  nearly  one-third  of  the  popu- 
lation depended  for  their  support  on  the  wholly  inade- 
quate supply  of  potatoes  around  their  cabins,  eked  out 
by  migratory  working  and  begging.  In  common,  how- 
ever, with  his  colleagues,  he  recommended  a  treatment 
of  the  disease  essentially  different  from  that  of  the  poor 
law.  They  believed  that  it  could  be  best  met  by  a  large 
expenditure  of  public  money  on  agricultural  schools; 
on  draining  and  cultivating  waste  lands,  on  developing 
public  works  and  in  assisting  emigration.  Peel  in  his 
private  letters  expressed  the  most  profound  scepticism 
about  the  possibility  of  obtaining  in  Ireland  such  ad- 
ministration of  relief  as  would  prevent  a  poor  law  from 
becoming  an  intolerable  scourge.' 

The  poor  law  of  1838  and  1843  had  hardly  come 
into  full  and  general  operation  w^ien  it  had  to  encoun- 
ter a  calamity  before  which  all  administrative  resources 
broke  down.      The  attempts  to  deal  with  the  great 

*  Cusack,  1.  490-515.     See  too  O'Neill  Daunt's  Recollections,  i. 
274-276. 
'  Peel's  Correspondence,  ii.  326  ;  iii.  502. 


THE  POOR  LAW  COMMISSION  REPORT  183 

famine  do  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  the  present  work. 
It  will  be  sufficient  to  say  that  though  the  poor  law 
failed  to  prevent  the  starvation  of  tens  of  thousands, 
and  though  its  workhouse  test  aroused  a  perfect  fury  of 
popular  hostility,  it  undoubtedly  saved  countless  lives 
and  mitigated  an  overwhelming  calamity.  It  had  other 
and  far-reaching  effects  of  tremendous  power.  The 
poor  rate  rose  rapidly  to  a  height  which  was  absolutely 
crushing  to  a  poor  and  heavily  encumbered  landlord 
class,  who  were  for  a  considerable  period  deprived  of 
their  rental;  and  combined  with  the  Encumbered 
Estates  Act  it  produced  a  vast  change  in  the  ownership 
of  land.  It  brought  in  a  new  class  of  landlords,  who 
were  in  numerous  cases  ignorant  and  careless  of  the 
customs,  history,  and  traditions  of  the  estates  which 
they  purchased;  who  were  specially  invited  by  the  Im- 
perial Parliament  to  deal  with  land  on  purely  business 
and  commercial  principles,  and  who,  on  the  whole, 
proved  far  less  indulgent  to  the  tenants  than  the  class 
they  superseded.  The  poor  law  at  the  same  time  be- 
came the  most  powerful  of  all  engines  for  sweeping 
away  a  pauper  tenantry.  The  rule  that  relief  should 
not  be  granted  to  any  tenant  who  possessed  more  than 
a  quarter  of  an  acre  of  land  obliged  multitudes  during 
the  famine  years  to  throw  up  their  farms  in  order  to 
obtain  relief  in  the  poor-houses.  The  careless,  good- 
natured  indulgence  with  which  the  old  landlord  had 
acquiesced  in  the  multiplication  of  such  a  tenantry  van- 
ished when  the  burden  of  supporting  them  was  thrown 
on  his  shoulders.  The  scruples  that  might  be  felt  by  a 
broken  and  almost  ruined  landlord  about  carrying  out 
the  wholesale  eviction  of  non-paying  tenants  disappeared 
when  the  State  undertook  their  support,  and  the  im- 
proving landlord  who  came  in  as  a  purchaser  under  the 
Encumbered  Estates  Act,  found  the  consolidation  and 


184      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

redistribution  of  farms  the  first  condition  of  economic 
progress. 

Into  the  good  and  evil  of  these  great  changes  it  is 
not  here  necessary  for  me  to  enter,  but  there  are  two 
remarks  which  may  be  made  about  the  attitude  of 
O'Connell  towards  the  poor  law.  The  one  is  the  great 
wisdom  of  his  suggestion  that  State-aided  emigration 
would  be  of  the  highest  value  to  Ireland.  It  was  a  rec- 
ommendation which  had  been  anticipated  by  three 
earlier  Parliamentary  Committees/  and  which  was  after- 
wards fully  supported  by  the  Poor  Law  Commissioners,  as 
it  has  been  in  our  own  day  by  Mr.  Tuke.  Emigration, 
indeed,  after  the  famine  was  carried  out  by  voluntary 
effort  on  an  enormous  scale,  but  who  can  say  how  vastly 
its  suffering  might  have  been  diminished  if  it  had  been 
organised,  directed,  and  assisted  by  an  intelligent  gov- 
ernment, or  with  what  different  feelings  the  emigrants 
might  have  looked  back  on  the  country  and  the  govern- 
ment which  they  left  ?  It  is  probable,  indeed,  that  the 
true  source  of  the  savage  hatred  of  England  that  ani- 
mates great  bodies  of  Irishmen  on  either  side  of  the 
Atlantic  has  very  little  real  connection  with  the  penal 
laws,  or  the  rebellion,  or  the  Union.  It  is  far  more 
due  to  the  great  clearances  and  the  vast  unaided  emi- 
grations that  followed  the  famine. 

The  other  remark  is  that  the  attitude  of  O'Connell 
about  the  poor  laws,  whether  it  was  wise  or  unwise,  at 
least  clearly  showed  that  he  had  opinions  of  his  own, 
which  he  was  capable  of  maintaining  when  they  were 
extremely  unpopular  among  the  classes  on  whom  he 
chiefly  depended.  On  this  question  he  ran  counter  to 
the  whole  body  of  ecclesiastical  Catholic  opinion  in 
Ireland,  and  it  was  by  no  means  the  only  one  on  which  he 


See  the  Report  of  the  Devon  Commission,  pp.  1141-1143, 


TRADE  UNION  AGRARIAN  POLICY  1S5 

showed  that  he  was  something  more  than  a  mere  dema- 
gogue. He  steadily  refused  to  connect  himself  with 
the  English  Chartists,  though  he  agreed  with  some  of 
their  leading  views,  and  though  they  were  the  only 
class  in  England  who  were  prepared  to  support  to  the 
full  extent  his  Irish  demands.  He  refused  to  give  any 
countenance  to  the  Canadian  insurrection  though  it 
was  a  movement  which  might  have  been  easily  made 
very  popular  among  Irish  Catholics.  He  exerted  all 
his  influence  to  put  down  the  faction  fights  which  in 
some  parts  of  Ireland  were  so  mischievous  and  so  popu- 
lar, and  he  rendered  a  great  service  in  1837  and  the 
beginning  of  1838  by  his  strenuous  opposition  to  the 
trade  combinations  which  had  broken  out  in  Dublin 
and  Cork,  and  which  contributed  largely  to  drive  ship- 
building out  of  the  former  town. 

These  combinations  were  accompanied  by  the  same 
savage  tendency  to  outrage  and  murder  that  character- 
ised Irish  agrarian  combinations;  the  same  spirit  of 
anarchy  that  is  the  most  fatal  of  all  obstacles  to  Irish 
progress.  O'Connell  described  and  denounced  their 
crimes  with  unsparing  severity.  '  In  Cork,'  he  said 
in  a  speech  which  he  made  in  the  February  of  1838, 
'  within  the  last  two  or  three  years,  thirty-seven  persons 
have  been  burned  with  vitriol  so  as  to  lose  their  eye- 
sight; and  in  Dublin  there  is  not  a  day  in  which  some 
such  crime  is  not  committed.  On  January  4,  a  man 
was  dreadfully  beaten  only  because,  not  belonging  to 
the  combination,  he  could  not  give  the  sign  of  recog- 
nition. On  the  11th  a  man  and  his  wife  were  violently 
beaten  merely  because  the  man  was  not  a  combinator. 
Some  of  those  who  have  not  murdered  with  their  own 
hands  have  paid  35.  a  week  out  of  their  wages  for  the 
hire  of  assassins.'  Many  of  O'Connell's  followers  were 
engaged  in  these  combinations,  and  when  he  persisted 


186       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

in  denouncing  them  they  at  once  mutinied  against 
him.  For  several  successive  days  he  was  mobbed  and 
hooted  at  the  Koyal  Exchange,  but  he  never  lost  his 
courage,  not  only  denouncing  in  the  face  of  a  hostile 
meeting  the  crimes  and  the  illegal  combinations  of  the 
Dublin  workmen,  as  certain  in  the  long  run  to  dimin- 
ish their  employment  and  lower  their  wages,  but  also 
boldly  condemning  all  attempts  to  limit  the  number  of 
apprentices;  to  enforce  by  terrorism  a  uniform  rate  of 
wages  for  all  classes  of  workmen,  and  to  compel  em- 
ployers to  employ  particular  individuals  selected  or 
approved  by  the  workmen  and  not  by  the  employer 
himself.' 

A  few  words  may  here  be  said  about  O'Connell's 
agrarian  politics.  It  had  been  a  prediction  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  in  1828  that  the  Catholic  agitation  in 
Ireland  might  very  possibly  result  in  a  general  combi- 
nation to  refuse  the  payment  either  of  tithes  or  of  rent.' 
The  first  part  of  this  prediction  was  verified,  but  it 
would  be  a  total  mistake  to  suppose  that  O'Connell  ever 
gave  or  intended  to  give  an  agrarian  character  to  the 
agitation  he  directed.  He  was  himself  a  landlord, 
proud  of  his  old  pedigree  and  his  old  property,  and 
with  a  good  deal  of  the  feudal  feeling  of  his  class,  and 
in  his  political  career  he  desired  above  all  things  to 
carry  with  him  the  support  of  the  landed  gentry  of 
Ireland.  He  laboured  from  first  to  last  to  turn  away 
the  Irish  people  from  illegal  combinations  and  conspir- 
acies, from  agrarian  crimes  and  from  insurrectionary 


^  Senior's  Journals  in   Ire-  again  predicted  that  O'Connell 

land,    i.    40;    O'Neill    Daunt,  would  agitate  for  the  non-pay- 

Personal  Recollections,  i.   20-  ment  of  rents  as  he  had  already 

22 ;  Fagan,  ii.  661-667.  done  for  the  non-payment  of 

2  Peel's    Correspondence,    ii.  tithes,  as  a  means  of  obtaining 

71,  73.      In  1838  Wellington  repeal.     Ibid.  p.  364. 


TRADE  UNION  AGRARIAN  POLICY  187 

movements,  and  he  steadily  discountenanced  all  at- 
tempts to  connect  his  agitation  with  predatory  incite- 
ments and  attacks  on  property.  The  tithe  war  is  a 
partial  excej^tion,  but,  as  he  always  maintained,  tithes 
in  Ireland  stood  entirely  apart  from  all  other  kinds  of 
property,  and  even  when  attacking  Church  revenues  he 
clearly  recognised  the  equity  of  a  full  compensation  of 
life  interests.  One  of  his  arguments,  indeed,  against 
the  commutation  of  tithes  into  a  land  tax  payable  by 
the  landlord,  who  was  supposed  to  recuperate  himself 
out  of  the  rent,  was  that  to  blend  these  two  forms  of 
property  might  lead  the  Irish  peasant  to  look  with  less 
conviction  on  the  obligation  of  rent. 

The  socialistic  agrarian  doctrines  which  have  since 
become  the  main  stock-in-trade  of  the  Irish  agitator 
were  only  fully  elaborated  after  his  death,  but  when- 
ever any  attempt  was  made  to  introduce  them  into  the 
repeal  movement,  O'Connell  steadily  opposed  it.  He 
told  O'Neill  Daunt  that  he  had  once  greatly  admired 
Arthur  O'Connor,  the  well-known  leader  of  the  United 
Irishmen,  but  had  changed  his  opinion  when  he  heard 
from  Curran  that  he  formed  a  project  of  making  an 
agrarian  revolution  in  Ireland. ^  The  predatory  notions 
that  had  grown  up  among  the  English  Chartists  appear 
to  have  been  a  chief  reason  why  O'Connell  refused  to 
have  any  connection  with  them.  One  prominent  agi- 
tator recommended  a  strike  against  rent  until  what  he 
considered  the  grievances  of  Irish  tenants  were  settled. 
O'Connell  promptly  responded  by  expelling  him  from 
the  Repeal  Association,''  and  he  constantly  urged  that 
his  advocacy  of  repeal  was  conditioned  upon  his  belief 
that  the  establishment  of  a  domestic  Parliament  would 


^  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  p.  50. 

^  Gavan  Duffy's  League  of  the  North  and  of  the  South,  p.  50. 


188      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

in  no  degree  impair  the  existing  security  of  property. 
He  always  earnestly  de2:)recated  anything  of  the  nature 
of  class  warfare  in  Ireland.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
utterly  opposed  to  the  systematic  consolidation  of  farms 
and  consequent  evictions  which  were  taking  place.  He 
repeatedly  denounced  the  Sub-letting  Act  of  1826;  and 
he  dwelt  with  much  force  upon  the  excessive  powers 
and  facilities  of  eviction  given  to  the  landlord  by  sev- 
eral enactments  after  1815.  He  mentioned  before  the 
Devon  Commission  the  remarkable  fact  that  in  1800, 
when  the  Irish  landlord  Parliament  was  extinguished, 
'  there  was  no  power  to  eject  tenants  except  through 
the  medium  of  an  expensive  process  of  an  ejectment  in 
the  superior  courts/  which  cost  even  in  undefended 
cases  about  18?.,  and  if  the  tenant  took  out  a  defence, 
from  501.  to  150?.,  whereas  by  the  legislation  of  the  Im- 
perial Parliament  he  could  now  be  ejected  for  a  few 
shillings  by  civil  bill.' 

On  this  subject  he  differed  widely  from  Bishop 
Doyle  as  well  as  from  most  English  economists.  The 
old  system  of  management  under  which  every  tenant 
was  allowed  when  his  children  came  of  age  to  divide 
his  farm  and  to  settle  them  upon  it  was  fast  leading  to 
ruin,  and  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  and  justest  reproaches 
that  can  be  brought  against  the  Irish  landlords  that 
they  had  allowed  it  to  grow  up.  With  early  marriages 
and  large  families  and  rapidly  increasing  population 
the  greater  part  of  Ireland  was  now  in  the  hands  of  a 
thriftless,  ignorant  and  wretched  tenantry,  cultivating 
farms  that  were  too  small  to  yield  through  the  whole 
year  even  the  barest  necessaries  of  life;  living  lives 
which  were  materially  little  superior  to  those  of  sav- 
ages, and  ruining  the  land  by  the  manner  in  which  they 


^  Devon  Gommissioyi,  Digest  of  Evidence^  p.  835. 


THE  GREAT  CLEARANCES  189 

cultivated  it.  When  the  great  fall  of  prices  at  the 
peace  broke  down  the  agricultural  sj^tem,  it  became 
the  main  object  of  a  large  number  of  landlords  to  clear 
away  the  pauper  tenantry;  to  divide  their  land  into 
farms  sufficiently  large  to  be  profitably  cultivated;  to 
abolish  the  middleman;  to  give  a  preference  to  tenants 
who  had  some  capital  and  some  real  agricultural  capac- 
ity. The  Act  of  Sir  J.  Newport  enabling  landlords  by  a 
short  process  to  eject  tenants,  the  Sub-letting  Act  and 
the  disfranchisement  of  the  405.  freeholders  facilitated 
or  accelerated  the  change.  Bishop  Doyle,  in  some  re- 
markable evidence  given  before  a  commission  in  1830, 
expressed  his  full  approbation  of  the  new  system  of 
management.  It  had  become,  in  his  opinion,  abso- 
lutely necessary.  It  was  an  unmixed  benefit  not  only 
to  the  owners  but  also  to  the  tenants  who  remained, 
while  the  vast  increase  of  the  annual  produce  of  the 
soil  under  a  system  of  good  cultivation  was  a  great  and 
undoubted  benefit  to  the  community  as  a  whole.  Every 
wise  man.  Bishop  Doyle  said,  aj)plauded  the  measures 
which  had  been  taken  for  remedying  the  enormous  evils 
of  sub-letting  and  pauperism,  and  he  regretted  that  the 
Sub-letting  Act  and  the  Ejectment  Act  had  not  been 
enacted  thirty  years  earlier.  If  they  had  been  he 
thought  the  condition  of  Ireland  might  have  been  very 
different  from  what  it  was.  But  Bishop  Doyle  added, 
and  surely  with  good  reason,  that  the  condition  of  the 
ejected  tenants  was  miserable  in  the  extreme,  and  that 
the  new  system  ought  to  have  been  accompanied  by  a 
legal  provision  for  the  poor,  and  also  by  State  assistance 
to  emigrants/ 

Economists  argued,  indeed,  that  with  superior  hus- 

^  Select  Committee  on  the  State  of  the  Poor  in  Ireland  (Min- 
utes of  Evidence),  pp.  391-398.  See  too  the  Digest  of  the  Devon 
Commission,  pp.  1125-1131. 


190      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

bandry  the  demand  for  agricultural  labour  and  the  rate 
of  agricultural  wages  would  rise,  and  that  ejected  ten- 
ants would  earn  more  as  hired  labourers  upon  substan- 
tial farms  than  they  could  possibly  have  earned  by  the 
miserable  cultivation  of  minute  plots  of  land.  But  this 
could  only  be  after  a  considerable  interval,  and  in  the 
mean  time  vast  numbers  underwent  sufferings  w^hich  it 
is  difficult  to  exaggerate.  No  page  in  Irish  history  is 
more  painful  to  look  back  on  than  the  great  clearances 
both  before  and  after  the  famine.  Considered  as  a 
whole,  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  they 
were  inevitable,  but  they  were  often  carried  out  with 
great  harshness,  and  they  ought  certainly  in  my  opinion 
to  have  been  accompanied  not  only  by  a  legal  provision 
for  the  destitute  poor,  but  also  by  an  extensive  system 
of  State-aided  emigration. 

The  latter  remedy  O'Connell  had  advocated,  but  he 
was  strongly  opposed  to  the  poor  law;  he  denied  the 
necessity  of  the  clearances,  and  he  was  very  reluctant 
to  make  any  fundamental  change  in  the  old  manage- 
ment of  land.  He  said  in  the  House  of  Commons  that 
he  had  heard  the  middlemen  of  Ireland  traduced,  but 
'he  was  quite  prepared  to  stand  up  in  their  defence. 
They  mitigated  the  evils  of  absenteeism;  they  gave  em- 
ployment to  the  labouring  poor.  In  the  year  1798  they 
formed  the  yeomanry  cavalry  of  Ireland,  and  prevented 
the  Eevolution  of  France  from  spreading  to  that  coun- 
try.'^ 

It  was  only  in  the  latter  part  of  his  career,  and  as  a 
consequence  of  the  great  clearances  and  of  the  agrarian 
murders,  which  he  attributed  mainly  to  them,  that  he 
began  seriously  to  urge  the  necessity  of  new  agrarian 
legislation.     It  should  chiefly,  he  thought,  take  the 


^  March  22,  1830.     See  Cusack,  i.  40. 


O'CONNELL'S  AGRARIAN  POLICY  191 

form  of  giving  the  Irish  tenants  increased  security  of 
tenure  and  compensation  for  improvements.  In  the 
evidence  which  he  gave  before  the  Devon  Commission 
he  dwelt  specially  upon  the  great  increase  in  the  prac- 
tice of  taking  tenants  at  will  rather  than  on  lease.  He 
attributed  it  to  the  fall  and  fluctuation  of  prices  since 
the  war;  to  the  change  in  the  currency  altering  the 
relative  value  of  land  and  money ;  to  the  exorbitancy  of 
the  stamp  duties  on  leases,  and  to  the  prevailing  and, 
as  he  believed,  much  exaggerated  belief  that  an  enor- 
mously excessive  population  was  subsisting  on  the  land 
and  must  eventually  be  removed.  Political  causes  had 
also  some  influence,  but  in  his  opinion  economical  ones 
were  the  most  powerful,  and  he  believed  that  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  tenure  they  had  produced  was  one  of  the 
most  serious  evils  in  Ireland. 

'I  am  in  my  judgment,'  he  said,  '  Yerj  decidedly 
for  a  fixity  of  tenure.  I  think  there  are  circumstances 
occurring  which  lead  to  it  in  the  worst  way.  The  num- 
ber of  agrarian  murders  is  manifestly  accumulating;  I 
think  there  are  more  in  each  succeeding  year.  ...  If 
things  go  on  as  they  do,  those  murders  will  accumulate 
and  there  will  be  in  a  great  part  of  the  country  a  fixity 
of  tenure  conquered  from  the  landlords  from  fear,  and 
certainly  I  think  everybody  will  agree  with  me  that  a 
worse  fixity  of  tenure  could  not  by  any  human  possi- 
bility or  diabolical  contrivance  be  invented.'  The  only 
real  remedy,  he  believed,  would  be  to  make  leases  com- 
pulsory. Land  tenure  in  Ireland  should  rest  on  dis- 
tinct, definite,  written  contract.  Thirty-one  years' 
leases,  he  thought,  would  be  the  best,  but  no  lease 
should  be  for  less  than  twenty-one  years.  He  thought 
that  no  rent  should  be  recoverable  except  upon  a  lease. 
Such  a  measure,  he  admitted,  would  be  a  violent  rem- 
edy, but  it  was  required  to  meet  a  great  present  evil 


192      LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

and  to  avert  a  great  danger  in  the  future.  The  stamp 
duties  for  every  transaction  in  land  under  lOOZ.  a  year 
should  be  remitted,  and  legal  forms  of  leases  simplified/ 

In  a  private  letter  written  soon  after  he  recurred  to 
the  alarming  increase  of  agrarian  murders.  He  ob- 
served that  in  the  past  year  there  had  been  nineteen 
murders  of  this  class  between  Tipperary  and  the  King's 
County,  and  that  in  every  case  they  had  been  preceded 
by  a  great  clearance  of  land.  *  Recollect  also/  he  says, 
^  the  hideous  picture  given  in  Lord  Devon's  Report  of 
the  state  of  the  greater  part  of  the  agricultural  popula- 
tion. In  comparing  that  state  with  the  crimes  on  both 
sides  connected  with  the  clearance  system,  ask  yourself 
whether  it  is  possible  that  things  can  remain  as  they 
are.  .  .  .  Nothing  will  do  but  giving  some  kind  of 
fixity  of  tenure  to  the  occupiers,  and  especially  an  ab- 
solute right  of  recompense  for  all  substantial  improve- 
ments. I  am  ready  to  take  as  to  fixity  of  tenure  as 
moderate  a  measure  as  is  consistent  with  the  princi- 
ple. ...  In  truth,  unless  something  be  done  the  peo- 
ple will  slip  out  of  my  hands  and  the  hands  of  those 
who  like  me  are  for  peaceful  amelioration,  and  they 
will  operate  a  fixity  of  tenure  for  themselves  with  a 
vengeance.' ' 

Looked  at  in  the  light  of  future  events  these  views 
will  hardly  be  considered  extravagant.  The  system  of 
tenancies  at  will  was  undoubtedly  a  great  evil,  and 
O'Connell  was  perfectly  right  in  wishing  to  put  an  end 
to  it.     He  desired  the  Ulster  tenant-right  to  be  legal- 

^  Digest  Devon  Commission,  (Cusack,  ii.  165-207).      It  con- 

pp.  253-256.  tains  a  vast  amount  of  infor- 

^  Fitzpatrick,   ii.    352,    369.  mation   selected   from   official 

The  fullest  statement,  however,  sources  about  the  agricultural 

of    O'Connell's   views    on   the  condition   of   Ireland,    and   is 

land  question  will  be  found  in  deserving    of    most    attentive 

his  great  speech,  April  3,  1846  study. 


COMPENSATION  FOR  IMPROVEMENTS      193 

ised  and  extended  to  other  provinces,  and  also  a  repeal 
of  the  various  Acts  facilitating  evictions  which  had  been 
carried  since  the  Union.  ^  Above  all,'  he  said,  'give 
to  the  occupier  some  security  of  tenure  by  at  least 
allowing  the  tenant  the  full  benefit  of  all  the  capital 
and  the  labour  expended  by  him  in  the  improvement  of 
the  lands,  and  preventing  his  being  dispossessed  until 
he  is  recompensed  in  full  for  all  valuable  improvements.' 
It  is  to  be  feared  that  this  latter  remedy  would  have 
given  little  or  no  help  to  the  vast  cottier  peasantry 
whom  the  great  clearances  banished  from  the  soil. 
Sunk  in  abject  ignorance  and  poverty,  cultivating  in 
the  worst  and  most  wasteful  manner,  they  were  a  class 
deserving  of  deep  pity,  but  it  would  be  difficult  to  find 
any  ground  on  which  they  could  be  regarded  as  improv- 
ing tenants.  From  an  economical  point  of  view  the 
greatest  of  all  improvements  was  their  removal,  and  the 
first  task  of  the  improving  landlord  was  to  level  their 
mud  hovels,  to  fill  up  their  ditches,  to  endeavour  by  a 
long  course  of  manuring  to  restore  to  the  soil  which 
they  had  exhausted  something  of  its  old  fertility.  The 
broad  fact  that  in  183 G  Ireland  contained  a  population 
of  over  two  millions  who  could  find  no  settled  and 
steady  means  of  support,  and  were  for  several  months 
of  the  year  on  the  verge  of  starvation,  made  a  great 
displacement  absolutely  inevitable.  There  was,  how- 
ever, a  large  intermediate  class  who  had  fenced  the  land 
and  erected  its  buildings,  and  done  the  various  things 
for  the  farm  which  in  England  would  have  fallen  to 
the  share  of  the  landlord,  and  their  improvements  con- 
stituted a  real  and  important  question.  While  the 
system  of  long  leases  generally  prevailed  it  was  not 
pressing.  Under  this  system  a  tenant,  with  a  full 
knowledge  of  what  he  had  to  do,  took  land  on  such 
terms  that  he  could,  during  the  currency  of  his  lease, 
VOL.  n.  13 


194      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

amply  compensate  himself  for  his  expenditure.  There 
is  no  question  that  the  long  leaseholders  had  in  general 
found  their  bargains  eminentl}^  remunerative,  and  if 
there  was  any  real  moral  question  about  improvements 
it  lay  much  less  between  the  landlord  and  his  immedi- 
ate tenant,  than  between  that  tenant  and  those  to  whom 
he  had  sub-let. 

When,  however,  the  leases  diminished  and  the  sys- 
tem of  tenancies  at  will  became  common  even  in  con- 
siderable farms,  the  situation  was  much  altered.  The 
tenure  of  the  tenant  became  precarious,  and  the  outlay 
of  capital  on  improvements  was  at  the  mercy  of  the 
landlord.  The  ethics  of  the  question  were  very  simple. 
A  long  period  of  undisturbed  possession  at  a  rent  suffi- 
ciently low  to  enable  the  tenant  to  recuperate  himself 
for  his  outlay  met  the  difficulty,  and  there  was  then  no 
more  injustice  than  in  the  English  system  under  which 
the  landlord  let  the  farm  fully  equipped,  adding  to  the 
rental  the  interest  of  the  money  he  had  expended  on 
improvements.  In  a  well-managed  estate  the  Irish 
tenant  expended  his  capital  on  the  tacit  understanding 
that  as  long  as  he  paid  his  rent  he  would  not  be  dis- 
turbed, but  he  fully  accepted  the  equity  of  increases  of 
rent  at  long  intervals.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  in- 
creases were  rarer  than  in  England,  and  one  of  the  chief 
causes  of  the  marked  preference  which  the  Irish  tenant 
often  showed  for  the  position  of  tenant  at  will  over  that 
of  leaseholder  was  due  to  the  fact  that  where  leases  ex- 
isted there  was  generally  a  revision  of  rent  at  the  ter- 
mination of  the  contract,  whereas  under  the  other 
system  rents  often  remained  for  several  generations  un- 
disturbed. At  the  same  time,  it  was  plainly  within  the 
power  of  the  landlord,  by  rapid  or  excessive  raising  of 
rents,  or  by  a  resumption  of  land  immediately  after  a 
tenant  had  laid  out  large  sums  on  its  improvement^  to 


COMPENSATION  FOR  IMPROVEMENTS  195 

confiscate  those  improvements,  and  the  best  judges  felt 
that  some  special  legal  protection  was  needed. 

The  Devon  Commission  examined  this  question  care- 
fully. It  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  confiscations  of 
this  kind  had  not  been  common,  but  there  had  been 
instances,  and  they  produced  a  widespread  uncertainty 
and  insecurity  among  neighbouring  tenants.  They 
were  at  this  time  usually  due  to  a  spendthrift  heir,  a 
bankruptcy,  or  an  unexpected  change  of  ownership; 
and,  although  at  the  period  of  the  Devon  Commission 
not  many  cases  had  been  brought  for^vard,  this  would 
hardly  have  been  true  of  the  period  which  immediately 
followed  O'ConnelPs  death.  A  new  influence  had  come 
into  play.  The  Encumbered  Estates  Act  took  no  cog- 
nisance w^hatever  of  tenants'  improvements,  sold  to  the 
purchaser  the  most  absolute  ownership  of  the  land  and 
of  all  that  was  on  it,  and  guaranteed  it  to  him  for  ever 
under  a  parliamentary  title.  The  new  purchasers,  as  a 
rule,  knew  nothing  and  cared  nothing  about  tlie  ante- 
cedents of  the  estate.  The  Court  furnished  them  with 
no  information  on  the  subject.  If  the  rents  were  low 
or  the  leases  were  soon  to  fall  in,  this  was  specially  put 
forward  by  the  Court  as  an  inducement  to  purchasers, 
and  they  were  not  only  permitted,  but  virtually  invited, 
by  the  State  to  deal  with  the  land  as  absolutely  their 
own,  and  on  strictly  commercial  princi2)les. 

The  essential  justice  of  O'Connell's  demand  was 
largely  recognised  by  the  English  Government,  and 
more  than  one  measure  was  brought  in  by  a  Conserva- 
tive ministry  for  the  purpose  of  regulating  and  settling 
the  question.  They  were  most  unfortunately  and  fool- 
ishly opposed,  and  they  failed  to  become  law.  O'Con- 
nell  was  at  this  time  in  his  grave,  but  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  these  measures  substantially  carried  out  his 
views.     Though  these  views  were  often  denounced  at 


106      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  time  as  confiscatory,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  he  desired  more  than  was  strictly  equitable,  or  that 
he  had  any  sympathy  with  the  later  doctrine  that  the 
improvements  made  by  a  tenant  are  his  absolute  prop- 
erty, altogether  irrespective  of  the  contracts  or  circum- 
stances under  which  he  made  them,  and  that  they 
constitute  him  a  part  owner  of  the  estate.  One  of  the 
chief  advocates  of  this  doctrine  has  pointed  out  as  a 
sign  of  the  limitation  of  O'Connell  that  he  clearly  rec- 
ognised efflux  of  time  at  a  moderate  rent  as  a  real 
compensation  for  improvements.  *  The  principles  of 
agrarian  reform  were  so  ill-understood  that  even  O'Con- 
nell admitted  the  vicious  practice  of  charging  the  tenant 
rent  on  his  own  improvements,  and  counting  the  enjoy- 
ment of  them  as  a  gradual  compensation.'  * 

A  considerable  absentee  tax  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
another  leading  idea  of  O'Connell.  He  contended  that 
as  much  as  six  millions  a  year  of  the  rental  of  Ireland 
habitually  passed  out  of  the  country;  that  this  drain 
was  a  leading  cause  of  the  excessive  poverty  of  Ireland, 
and  that  it  had  been  greatly  increased  by  the  Union. 
Few  things  irritated  him  more  than  the  school  of  econo- 
mists headed  by  McCulloch,  who,  while  admitting  the 
moral  evil  resulting  from  the  absenteeism  of  the  great 
proprietors,  denied  that  it  was  an  economical  evil,  main- 
taining that  the  rents  were  ultimately  paid  for  by  the 
productions  of  the  estate.  The  alleged  economical  evil 
was  considerably  mitigated  under  the  Melbourne  Min- 
istry by  the  Irish  poor  law  and  by  the  Act  commuting 
tithes  into  a  rent-charge,  which  provided  that  a  sub- 
stantial proportion  of  the  rental  of  all  Irish  estates  must 
be  expended  in  Ireland  and  on  Irish  purposes. 

The  reform  of  the  grand  juries  may  also  be  consid- 


'  Duffy's  League  of  the  North  and  South,  p.  63. 


ABSENTEEISM— GRAND  JURIES  197 

ered  as  in  some  sense  an  agrarian  measure,  for  the  grand 
juries  consisted  of  the  landowners  of  the  country,  irre- 
spective of  creed,  and  to  them  were  entrusted  the  greater 
part  of  the  local  government  of  Ireland  and  also  very 
considerable  powers  of  taxation.  There  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  in  the  early 
days  of  the  nineteenth  century  they  were  much  tainted 
by  the  evils  of  monopoly,  and  that  much  Jobbing  went 
on  under  their  influence.  O'Connell  would  have  placed 
them  upon  a  broad  elective  basis.  His  view  was  not 
adopted,  but  the  Grey  Ministry  in  1833,  and  the  Mel- 
bourne Ministry  in  1836,  introduced  some  exceedingly 
successful  measures  of  reform.*  Something  of  a  repre- 
sentative character  was  given  to  the  grand  juries  by  a 
provision  that  at  least  one  freeholder  or  leaseholder 
from  each  barony  must  be  upon  the  panel.  Jobbing 
in  public  works  was  effectually  dealt  with  by  clauses 
providing  that  all  such  works  must  be  made  by  con- 
tract, that  all  presentments  for  money  must  first  be  ap- 
proved by  special  sessions  in  which  the  magistrates  were 
associated  with  the  leading  cess-payers,  and  by  giving 
large  advisory  and  controlling  powers  to  the  county 
surveyor,  who  Avas  appointed  by  the  Lord  Lieutenant. 
The  control  of  the  Central  Government  over  the  grand 
juries  was  in  other  ways  still  further  increased.  It  took 
from  them  the  appointment  of  their  chief  officers,  sub- 
jected their  accounts  to  a  regular  audit,  substituted  a 
general  constabulary  force  for  the  old  local  police, 
changed  the  system  of  local  rates,  submitted  local  ex- 
penditure to  the  examination  of  the  judge  of  assize, 
and  gave  the  rate-payers  a  power  of  challenging  it. 

Under  the  influence  of  this  legislation,  which  was 
afterwards  in  some  respects  amended,  the  old  abuses  of 


» 3  &4  William  IV.  c.  78;  6  &  7  William  IV.  c.  116. 


198      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  grand  jury  system  almost  wholly  disappeared.^  Ac- 
cording to  modern  democratic  ideas  it  continued  to  be 
an  anomalous  one,  for  it  left  local  government  mainly 
in  the  hands  of  the  landowning  class,  and  it  gave  great 
powers  of  taxation  with  very  imperfect  representation. 
But  all  competent  and  unprejudiced  judges  admitted 
that  in  the  later  decades  of  their  history  the  Irish  grand 
juries  exercised  their  administrative  powers  wdth  effi- 
ciency, economy,  and  integrity,  and  that  the  depart- 
ments of  Irish  life  which  were  under  their  control  were 
conspicuously  well  managed.  They  consisted  of  edu- 
cated men  who  had  a  large  stake  in  the  country  and  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  its  conditions,  and  who  were 
for  the  most  part  perfectly  honest  and  trustworthy. 
They  provided  employment  for  the  landed  gentry  in 
their  own  neighbourhoods,  and  in  a  turbulent  and  dis- 
affected country  they  were  important  centres  of  loyalty 
and  order. 

O'Connell  himself  was  a  large  landlord  and  not  a 
model  one.  The  over-crowding,  the  sub-letting,  the 
slatternly  and  impoverished  state  of  Cahirciveen  and 
the  neighbouring  district,  the  disgraceful  condition  of 
the  Abbey  Churchyard  on  his  own  demesne,  where,  as 
in  so  many  other  Irish  churchyards,  dead  men's  bones 
and  fragments  of  old  coffins  lay  scattered  among  the 
graves,  struck  strangers  from  England.  In  1845,  the 
*  Times  '  newspaper  sent  down  a  Commission  to  inquire 
into  the  management  of  O'Connell's  estate,  and  it 
brought  in  an  elaborate  indictment  of  oppression  and 
neglect  against  him,  which  was  afterwards  in  its  general 
outlines,  though  apparently  without  any  careful  exam- 
ination, supported  by  Miss  Martineau  in  her  *  Letters 
from   Ireland.'      Attacks  of  this  kind,   which   were 


*  See  O'Connor  Morris,  Present  Irish  Questions,  p.  313. 


O'CONNELL  AS  LANDLORD  199 

weapons  in  a  bitter  party  warfare,  must  be  looked  on 
with  mucli  suspicion,  but  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  Sir 
W.  Gregory,  who  was  a  very  competent  judge  and  a 
warm  admirer  of  O'Connell,  said  of  him  that  '  his  own 
property  was  a  model  of  everything  that  ought  not  to 
be.' 

There  is,  however,  a  good  deal  to  be  said  on  the 
other  side.  O'Connell  inherited  an  estate  in  one  of  the 
most  backward,  uncivilised,  impoverished  parts  of  Ire- 
land, and  he  had  not  the  time,  even  if  he  had  the  in- 
clination, to  change  its  system  and  its  customs.  He 
appears  to  have  been  very  popular  among  his  own  peo- 
ple, who  used  to  throng  to  him  in  great  numbers  to 
settle  their  disputes,  and  competent  and  unprejudiced 
witnesses  have  declared  that  he  was  looked  upon  as  a 
good  and  indulgent  landlord.*  Among  others,  W.  E. 
Forster  visited  O'Connell's  estate  during  the  famine 
year,  1846,  and  after  careful  inquiry  he  expressed  his 
conviction  that  the  impression  given  by  the  '  Times ' 
report  was  'most  unfair  and  untrue,'  and  that  O'Con- 
nell was  decidedly  the  best  landlord  in  his  district, 
though,  owing  to  his  having  allowed  ejected  tenants 
from  other  properties  to  squat  on  his  estate  at  nominal 
rents,  there  were  some  very  wretched  cabins  on  his 
land.  On  the  whole,  however,  in  the  opinion  of  For- 
ster, his  villages  were  much  better  than  many  in  Kerry.'' 
A  curious  and  very  creditable  letter  has  been  preserved 
which  was  written  by  O'Connell  to  his  agent  in  1834, 
when  the  cholera  was  spreading  through  Ireland.^  He 
directs  his  agent  to  spare  no  expense  that  can  possibly 
alleviate  the  sufferings  of  his  people ;  to  provide  at  his 
cost  additional  medical  attendance;  to  take  care  that 
while  the  epidemic  was  raging  the  poor  around  Darry- 

'  See  Fitzpatrick.  ii.  364-36G. 
•  Reid's  Life  of  Forster,  i.  178-182.     ^  Fitzpatrick,  i.  413-413. 


200      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

nane  should  have  a  meat  diet;  to  distribute  among 
them  coal  and  blankets.  *  Above  and  before  all  things/ 
he  concludes,  '  be  prodigal  out  of  my  means — beef, 
bread,  mutton,  medicines,  physician,  everything  you 
can  think  of.  Write  ofi  to  Father  O'Connell  to  take 
every  previous  precaution — a  mass  every  possible  day, 
and  getting  the  people  to  go  to  Confession  and  Com- 
munion, rosaries  and  other  public  prayers  to  avert  the 
Divine  wrath.' 

A  landlord  who  wrote  in  such  a  strain  may  have 
had  many  faults,  but  he  can  hardly  have  been  harsh 
and  oppressive.  He  was  accused  of  having  evicted  ten- 
ants and  he  did  not  deny  the  charge,  but  he  strenuously 
and  very  characteristically  protested  that  he  had  never 
given  any  countenance  to  the  clearance  system.  *  The 
clearance  system  consists  in  putting  out  tenants  with- 
out substituting  others  in  their  places,  thus  clearing  the 
land  of  the  people.  I  never  did  any  such  thing.  .  .  . 
AVhenever  I  have  been  under  the  necessity  of  putting 
out  one  tenant,  I  immediately  substituted  another  for 
him,  giving  to  the  outgoing  tenant,  in  all  recent  in- 
stances, the  fine  i")aid  me  by  the  incoming  tenant.  I 
had  thus  introduced  the  principle  and  practice  of 
tenant-right  on  my  property.'  He  is  said  to  have  spent 
4,000/.  on  Cahirciveen  and  to  have  considerably  im- 
proved the  condition  of  his  tenants.' 

It  was  in  his  old  ancestral  home  of  Darrynane  that 
O'Connell  might  be  seen  perhaps  at  most  advantage. 
It  was  situated  on  that  Kerry  coast  which,  in  its  wild 
and  majestic  beauty,  is  scarcely  equalled  in  Ireland  and 
hardly  surpassed  in  Europe.  Close  to  the  house  lay 
the  open  Atlantic  with  its  gigantic  waves,  and  its  clear 
deep  waters,  and  its  ever-changing  hues,  while  the  coast 


»  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  365-367. 


O'CONNELL  AT  DARRTNANE  201 

line  curved  in  graceful  bays  formed  a  long  range  of 
noble  mountain  heights.  The  delicious  purity  of  the 
air,  the  mildness  of  the  climate  where  the  myrtle,  the 
arbutus  and  the  fuchsia  can  grow  with  true  Southern 
luxuriance;  the  vivid,  dappled,  dream-like  colouring 
on  sea  and  land  which  gives  a  peculiar  charm  to  Irish 
coast  scenery,  could  be  nowhere  found  in  greater  per- 
fection. It  is  a  colouring  wholly  unlike  that  of  South- 
ern Europe,  but  there  are  days  when  in  its  entrancing 
and  most  poetic  beauty  it  could  not  be  excelled  on  the 
Neapolitan  or  Sicilian  shores. 

The  population  was  purely  Celtic,  Catholic,  almost 
wholly  Irish-speaking,  and  O'Connell  lived  among 
them  like  a  feudal  chief.  His  house  was  filled  with 
guests,  and  no  one  knew  better  how  to  exercise  hospi- 
tality. There  was  nothing  there  of  the  drunken  rev- 
elry which  so  often  characterised  the  rude  hospitality 
of  the  Irish  chiefs,  and  with  which  the  pages  of  Bar- 
rington  and  Lever  have  made  us  familiar.  The  Chap- 
lain and  Confessor  of  0' Council  had  an  honoured  place 
in  his  home.  There  was  a  family  chapel  to  which  all 
members  of  the  household  were  daily  called  to  prayer. 
The  voices  of  little  children  were  nearly  always  to  be 
heard,  for  O'Connell  loved  to  gather  his  numerous 
grandchildren  about  him.  Even  in  his  shortest  holiday 
several  hours  of  the  day  were  usually  spent  in  hard 
work  in  his  library.  He  had  never  been  addicted  to 
the  intemperate  habits  which  were  the  prevailing  vice 
of  so  many  of  his  class,  and  to  which  his  strong,  impul- 
sive, animal  nature  might  have  naturally  inclined  him, 
and  when  the  great  temperance  movement  of  Father 
Mathew  arose  he  supported  it  with  all  his  influence, 
and  himself  took  the  pledge  as  an  example  to  the  peo- 
ple. But  his  high  spirits,  his  countless  anecdotes,  his 
shrewdness,  and  his  wit  made  his  conversation  an  un- 


202      LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

failing  delight,  and  his  genial,  unaffected  kindliness  of 
nature  set  all  his  guests  at  their  ease.  Forster,  who 
visited  him,  described  him  as  showing  'all  the  courtesy 
of  a  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  which  is  indeed  the 
tone  of  his  bearing  in  his  own  home.'  lie  was  proud 
of  his  farming,  and  would  boast  like  an  old  squire  of 
the  superiority  of  his  hay  crops  over  those  of  his  neigh- 
bours. In  the  winter  of  1845-46  he  made  106  daily 
records  of  the  temperature  at  Darrynane. 

His  favourite  amusement  was  hare-hunting  on  foot, 
with  beagles,  over  the  mountains,  and  up  to  an  ad- 
vanced age  he  was  not  only  the  keenest,  but  also  the 
most  agile  and  untiring  of  the  climbers.  It  was  cer- 
tainly no  Epicurean  sport.  The  hunt,  usually  accom- 
panied by  a  large  retinue  of  ragged  followers,  started  at 
daybreak,  and  it  was  only  after  some  hours  and  when 
the  post  bag  had  brought  the  correspondence  of  the  day 
that  the  servants  appeared  bringing  up  breakfast  for 
the  hunt.  It  was  spread  on  the  green  sward  beneath 
the  shelter  of  some  great  rock  or  on  the  border  of  a 
mountain  torrent,  and  there  '  the  Liberator,'  as  he  was 
always  called,  having  first  swiftly  mastered  the  political 
news,  often  met  his  tenants  who  came  to  him  with  their 
grievances  and  their  disputes,  and  among  whom  he  ad- 
ministered a  patriarchal  justice.  It  was  in  these  wild 
Kerry  scenes,  far  removed  from  English  types  and  cus- 
toms and  habits,  that  the  poetic  nature  of  O'Connell 
was  developed  and  the  lines  of  his  character  and  sym- 
pathies were  chiefly  moulded.  He  had  grown  up  among 
the  traditions  of  the  penal  laws,  of  the  '  Wild  Geese ' 
who  fled  to  the  continental  armies  from  every  Kerry 
creek,  of  the  achievements  of  the  Irish  brigade  in  many 
foreign  fields,  of  the  desperate  smuggling  adventures 
in  which  his  own  family  had  been  often  mixed.  The 
legends,  the  superstitions,  the  ideal  types  of  an  intense 


O'CONNELL  AT  DARRYNANE  203 

Catholicism  formed  the  very  atmosphere  he  breathed, 
and  they  gave  a  strong  anti-English  bias  to  his  feelings. 
But  though  priests  and  repealers  were  the  most  numer- 
ous among  his  guests,  many  Englishmen,  Protestants 
and  Conservatives,  enjoyed  his  hospitality  at  Darry- 
nane,  and  very  few  seem  to  have  resisted  his  personal 
charm,  or  come  away  without  their  prejudices  against 
him  being  materially  diminished. 

To  the  English  press,  which  pursued  him  with  per- 
sistent and  most  rancorous  abuse,  O'Connell  was  noth- 
ing more  than  a  foul-mouthed,  untruthful,  vulgar  and 
venal  demagogue,  and  it  must  be  owned  that  numerous 
passages  might  be  culled  from  his  mob  oratory  which 
gave  only  too  much  countenance  to  this  view.  But  to 
those  who  knew  him  well  there  was  another  side  to  his 
character,  and  among  his  many  warm  friends  there 
were  men  of  undoubted  honour.  They  lamented  some 
things  that  he  did  and  very  many  things  that  he  said, 
but  they  fully  recognised  in  him  not  only  amazing  abili- 
ties but  also  elements  of  character  of  a  real,  though 
unhappily  by  no  means  unmixed,  nobility.  '  He  was,' 
said  one  who  knew  him  well,'  *  a  true  friend,  faithful 
to  all  who  had  ever  done  him  service. '  He  was  in  gen- 
eral eminently  forgiving,  and  a  love  of  giving  pleasure 
was  one  of  his  most  evident  characteristics.  It  is  a  re- 
mark of  a  very  able  and  very  hostile  critic  of  his  career 
that  this  more  than  anything  else  seemed  to  be  at  the 
bottom  of  that  extreme  desire  to  command  patronage 
with  which  he  was  often  reproached.'  He  was  capable 
even  in  his  most  angry  controversies  of  traits  of  true 
magnanimity.  There  was  an  able  and  important  Dub- 
lin man  with  whom  he  had  been  on  intimate  terms. 


»  Mr.  John  Ball. 

'  Gavan  Duffy,  Four  Years  of  Irish  History,  p.  176. 


204      LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

They  afterwards  quarrelled  about  some  political  differ- 
ence; O'Oonnell  denounced  him  in  language  of  extreme 
violence,  and  for  many  years  they  were  on  terms  of  hos- 
tility. Long  after  when  O'Connell  was  in  his  grave 
his  opponent  told  a  friend  '  that  during  the  period  of 
their  friendship  O'Connell  had  become  aware  of  cir- 
cumstances of  a  private  nature  which  if  published  would 
have  been  ruinous  to  the  position  and  credit  of  his  ad- 
versary, but  in  spite  of  the  violence  of  their  subsequent 
quarrel,  was  never  led  to  divulge  them  or  allude  to 
them  in  any  way/  '  Lord  Ebrington,  afterwards  Lord 
Fortescue,  and  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  w^as  at  one 
period  in  close  and  confidential  relations  with  O'Con- 
nell, and  afterwards  when  the  repeal  agitation  began 
they  were  in  violent  hostility;  but  the  Lord  Lieutenant 
noticed  that  in  his  most  angry  moments  O'Connell 
never  suffered  anything  he  had  learnt  in  the  period  of 
their  confidence  to  escape  him.^  How  unlike  the  tone 
and  ethics  of  the  later  school  of  Irish  agitators  ! 

The  autobiography  of  Sir  William  Gregory  gives  a 
vivid  picture  of  the  kind  of  fascination  he  exercised, 
especially  over  young  men.  In  1842  there  was  an  elec- 
tion at  Dublin  which  was  a  great  defeat  for  O'Connell. 
The  Whig  candidate  was  Lord  Morpeth,  in  after  years 
Lord  Carlisle,  who  had  been  Chief  Secretary  in  the 
popular  administration  of  Lord  Mulgrave,  and  was  long 
afterwards  one  of  the  most  popular  of  Irish  viceroys. 
He  was  already  a  distinguished  statesman,  and  he  was 
a  close  ally  and  a  personal  friend  of  O'Connell.  The 
Conservative  and  Orange  parties  set  up  Gregory  in 
opposition  to  him.     Gregory  was  then  a  young  man  of 


^  See  an  interesting  article   on  O'Connell  by  Mr.  John  Ball, 
Macmillan's  3Iagazine,  July  1873. 
'  I  am  indebted  for  this  anecdote  to  the  present  Lord  Fortescue. 


O'CONNELL  AND  GREGORY  205 

twenty-five,  almost  wholly  inexperienced  and  ignorant 
of  politics,  and  he  won  the  seat.  O'Connell  had  warmly 
supported  Lord  Morpeth  and  spoke  for  him  on  the 
hustings.  Gregory,  however,  defended  his  own  cause 
in  a  bright,  frank  and  outspoken  speech,  at  the  same 
time  boldly  repudiating  all  sympathy  with  the  violent 
anti- Catholicism  of  many  of  his  supporters.  O'Connell 
was  delighted  with  his  young  opponent.  After  the 
nomination  he  went  up  to  him  and  said :  *  May  I  shake 
you  by  the  hand,  young  man  ?  Your  speech  has  grati- 
fied me  so  much  that  if  you  will  only  whisper  the  little 
word  repeal — only  whisper  it,  mind  you — I  will  be  the 
first  to-morrow  at  the  polling  booth  to  vote  for  you.' 
They  crossed  over  to  England  in  the  same  boat,  and 
O'Connell  came  up  to  him  and  said,  '  Come  here,  young 
man  !  You  are  not  ashamed  to  come  and  sit  by  old 
Dan,  are  you  ?  You  are  just  in  the  proper  place  where 
you  ought  to  be; '  and  then  in  a  conversation  full  of 
charm  he  dwelt  on  the  wrongs  of  his  co-religionists, 
and  justified  his  efforts  to  redress  them.  Gregory  re- 
membered the  pathos  with  which  he  described  the  scene 
— once  too  common  in  Ireland — when  on  a  wet  Sunday 
a  ragged,  half-starved  crowd  might  be  seen  kneeling  in 
the  rain  outside  a  squalid  chapel  far  too  small  to  contain 
the  worshippers,  while  close  by  stood  the  stately,  well- 
endowed  Protestant  church  with  perhaps  half  a  dozen 
worshippers  grouped  around  its  deserted  altar,  and 
asked  how  long  the  state  of  things  which  such  a  con- 
trast implied  could  continue. 

Touches  of  this  kind  will  not  be  wanting  in  any 
true  picture  of  O'Connell.  The  big,  burly  form  and 
the  somewhat  coarse  features  which  the  caricaturists 
made  so  familiar  were  redeemed  from  vulgarity  by  sin- 
gularly keen  and  beautiful  blue  eyes:  *  the  most  kindly 
and  honest-looking,'  it  was  said,   'that  can  be  con- 


206      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

ceived. '  ^  He  had  a  fine  and  delicately  moulded  hand, 
a  bright  smile  which  lit  up  his  whole  countenance,  and 
his  wonderful  voice,  which  was  so  powerful  that  it  was 
distinctly  heard  across  Merrion  Square,  the  second 
largest  square  in  Dublin,*  was  at  least  as  remarkable 
for  its  exquisite  melody  and  its  infinitely  varied  modu- 
lations. He  had  in  his  youth  heard  Pitt  speak,  and  he 
was  specially  struck  with  the  skill  with  which  that  great 
orator  managed  his  noble  voice.  '  It  was  from  him,' 
O'Connell  once  said,  '  that  I  learned  to  throw  out  the 
lower  tones  at  the  close  of  my  sentences.'  ^  In  his 
speeches  at  the  monster  meetings  in  Ireland  nothing 
was  so  remarkable  as  the  many  moods  he  could  produce. 
The  same  audience  was  alternately  convulsed  with 
laughter,  moved  to  tears,  roused  to  the  most  passionate 
excitement.  He  could  touch  every  chord  of  the  Irish 
nature,  and  as  long  as  he  could  gain  his  point  and  in- 
fluence his  audience  he  cared  very  little  what  means  he 
employed.  No  great  orator  had  less  pride  in  his  ora- 
tory as  a  work  of  art.  If  the  vulgarest  jests,  or  the 
coarsest  Billingsgate,  or  the  most  fulsome  flattery,  or 
the  most  scandalous  exaggeration  could  answer  his  pur- 
pose he  would  resort  to  it,  though  few  men  could,  if 
the  occasion  required  it,  argue  a  great  question  with  a 
more  convincing  and  commanding  power,  or  quote 
poetry  with  a  more  exquisite  pathos,  or  describe  a  scene 
with  a  more  graphic  eloquence.  *  A  great  speech,'  he 
used  to  say,  '  is  a  fine  thing;  but,  after  all,  the  verdict 
is  the  thing,'  and  he  seldom  cared  to  reflect  that  the 
language  which  he  used  effectively  before  one  audience 


*  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  255.  lin,  and  was  pleased  to  find  a 

^  I  have  heard  this  from  a  complete  corroboration  of  it  in 

relation  of  my  own — long  since  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  312. 

dead — who  then  lived  in  Dub-  '^  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  145. 


HIS  MOB  ORATORY  207 

was  often  taken  down  by  the  reporters  and  repeated  to 
audiences  of  a  very  different  kind. 

He  complained  much  of  the  reports  of  his  speeches, 
and  was  more  than  once  in  violent  conflict  with  the 
reporters.  On  one  occasion,  when  he  was  speaking  in 
a  purely  Celtic  district.  Government  reporters  had  been 
sent  to  take  down  his  words.  O'Connell  at  once  brought 
them  forward  to  the  very  front  of  his  platform,  and 
then  began  his  speech  in  Irish,  telling  his  delighted 
audience  why  he  was  doing  so,  and  eliciting  peals  of 
good-humoured  laughter  at  the  discomfited  reporters. 
Fastidious  and  cultivated  strangers,  however,  who  some- 
times dropped  in  at  some  of  his  speeches  in  remote  Irish 
districts,  were  perfectly  bewildered  at  the  kind  of  lan- 
guage he  used,  and  utterly  incapable  of  understanding 
his  reputation  as  an  orator.  Montalembert,  who  was 
one  of  his  steadiest  admirers,  had  visited  Darrynane 
when  a  very  young  man,  and  heard  some  of  O'ConnelFs 
Kerry  speeches,  and  he  came  away  profoundly  disap- 
pointed. Constant  repetition,  O'Connell  used  to  say, 
is  necessary  in  politics,  and  if  the  same  speech  would 
do  for  several  audiences  he  never  hesitated  to  repeat  it. 
*  He  always,'  as  one  of  his  friends  said,  '  wears  out  one 
speech  before  he  gives  us  another.'  His  first  and  last 
object  was  to  command  or  influence  his  audience,  and 
with  an  Irish  crowd  he  scarcely  ever  failed.  Once  a 
great  and  overcrowded  platform  on  which  he  was  speak- 
ing was  reported  to  be  giving  way,  and  there  was  im- 
minent danger  of  a  terrible  catastrophe.  O'Connell  at 
once  told  his  audience  what  had  occurred,  and  in  calm 
but  authoritative  tones  ordered  them  to  descend  one  by 
one  in  single  file  without  hurry  or  panic,  and  he  was 
60  perfectly  obeyed  that  the  danger  was  completely 
averted. 

In  England  there  were  times  when  he  attained  a 


208      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

considerable  amount  of  mob  popularity,  but  he  was 
never  really  respected,  and  it  was  a  keen  humiliation  to 
a  large  part  of  the  English  people  that  the  Melbourne 
Ministry  depended  for  its  majority  on  his  support.  The 
many  votes  he  could  command ;  his  admirable  parlia- 
mentary eloquence;  his  boundless  readiness  in  debate; 
his  singular  adroitness  or,  as  his  enemies  called  it,  cun- 
ning in  political  management,  could  not  counterbalance 
the  unpopularity  which  attached  to  him  and  to  his  fol- 
lowers. He  was,  as  he  himself  said,  ^  the  best-abused 
man  alive.'  As  the  typical  Irishman,  Catholic,  and 
Eepealer,  he  aroused  against  himself  the  strong  national 
and  religious  prejudices  of  large  classes  of  Englishmen, 
while  others  were  scandalised  by  his  violent  agitation 
for  democratic  reform  and  the  abolition  of  the  corn 
laws,  and  by  the  coarse,  reckless,  and  vituperative  lan- 
guage in  which  he  too  often  indulged.  The  downfall 
of  the  Melbourne  Ministry  and  the  complete  triumph 
of  Sir  R.  Peel  were  due  to  many  causes,  but  among 
them  the  general  dislike  of  O'Connell  in  England  and 
the  undoubted  fact  that  the  ministry  subsisted  mainly 
by  his  support  were  prominent.  The  Appropriation 
Clause  led  to  a  great  party  humiliation,  because  it  was 
plainly  repugnant  to  the  wishes  of  the  majority  of  the 
English  people,  and  the  anti-Popery  and  anti-Irish 
feelings  were  chief  elements  of  the  strong  popular 
sentiment  against  the  Government. 

It  would  have  been  impossible  to  give  O'Connell 
a  place  in  it  without  shattering  it,  and  there  was 
no  taunt  against  ministers  more  applauded  than  their 
alleged  subserviency  to  the  agitator.  The  House 
of  Commons  seldom  rang  with  more  enthusiastic 
plaudits  than  when  Stanley,  in  one  of  his  attacks 
upon  the  Government,  quoted  these  lines  from  Shake- 
speare : 


HIS  DEMOCRATIC  CRUSADE  209 

But  shall  it  be  that  you,  that  set  the  crown 
Upon  the  head  of  this  forgetful  man, 
And,  for  his  sake,  wear  the  detested  blot 
Of  murd'rous  subornation — shall  it  be 
That  you  a  world  of  curses  undergo, 
Being  the  agents,  or  base  second  means, 
The  cords,  the  ladder,  or  the  hangman  rather  ? 
Oh  !  pardon  me  that  I  descend  so  low 
To  show  the  line  and  the  predicament. 
Wherein  you  range  under  this  subtle  king. 
Shall  it,  for  shame,  be  spoken  in  these  days, 
Or  fill  up  chronicles  in  time  to  come. 
That  men  of  your  nobility  and  power 
Did  'gage  them  both  in  an  unjust  behalf. 
As  both  of  you — God  pardon  it  !  have  done  ? 

And  shall  it,  in  more  shame,  be  further  spoken, 
That  you  are  fooled,  discarded,  and  shook  off 
By  him  for  whom  these  shames  ye  underwent  ? 

He  had  associated  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  with  an 
extreme  type  of  English  Radicalism,  and  this  was  in 
itself  sufficient  to  alienate  from  him  the  great  majority 
o±  educated  men,  and  it  made  his  alliance  with  the 
AVhigs  a  source  of  weakness  to  his  friends.  His  demo- 
cratic crusade  was  probably  simply  an  incident  of  his 
Irish  policy.  An  Irishman  and  a  Catholic  above  all 
things,  passionately  attached  to  his  country  and  his 
creed,  he  attacked  with  but  little  scruple  any  institution 
which  stood  in  their  way.  To  make  numbers  rather 
than  wealth  the  source  of  political  power  would  have 
then  been  to  increase  the  relative  importance  of  Ireland 
in  the  Empire  and  of  the  Catholics  in  Ireland.  In 
judging  his  conduct  we  must  remember  that  the  House 
of  Lords  had  for  many  years  persistently  defeated  or 
mutilated  every  proposal  to  raise  the  Catholics  into 
equality  with  the  Protestants,  that  the  bitterest  invec- 

VOL.  II.  14 


210      LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

tives  had  been  directed  against  him  within  its  walls, 
and  that  it  appeared  idle  to  expect  that  Irish  tithes 
could  ever  be  abolished  with  its  consent.  Lord  Lynd- 
hurst  pronounced  the  Irish  to  be  '  aliens  in  race,  in 
country,  and  religion.'  O'Connell  retorted  by  fierce 
denunciations  of  an  hereditary  caste  overriding  the  de- 
cisions of  the  representatives  of  the  people.  The  Tory 
party  desired  to  restrict  the  franchise  in  Ireland  and 
had  already  abolished  the  forty-shilling  freeholders. 
O'Connell  met  their  policy  by  maintaining  the  natural 
right  of  every  man  to  a  vote.  His  opponents  often  ap- 
pealed without  scruple,  and  with  eminent  success,  to 
the  anti-Papal  and  anti-Irish  feeling  which  was  so  strong 
in  the  lower  strata  of  the  English  population.  He  re- 
taliated by  placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the  wild 
movement  for  radical  reform,  and  he  carried  his  propa- 
gandism  not  only  into  the  great  towns  of  the  north  of 
England,  but  also  into  Calvinistic  Scotland.  The 
Eadical  party  was  at  this  time  singularly  deficient  in 
eloquence,  and  Hume,  who  was  its  most  prominent 
member,  was  perhaps  the  most  tangled  and  inarticulate 
speaker  who  ever  succeeded  as  a  leader  in  England. 
'  He  would  speak  better,'  O'Connell  once  said,  *  if  he 
finished  one  sentence  before  he  began  the  next  but  one 
after.'  O'Connell,  trusting  to  his  own  marvellous 
powers  of  popular  oratory,  defied  religious  prejudices 
and  national  antipathy,  and  rarely  failed  to  win  a 
momentary  triumph;  but  neither  his  language  nor  his 
opinions  were  suited  to  a  cultivated  English  taste. 

He  was,  however,  never  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word  a  revolutionist.  For  the  continental  t3^pe  of  revo- 
lutionist he  had,  indeed,  a  cordial  detestation.  He 
hated  appeals  to  physical  force  and  general  attacks  on 
property;  he  always  declared  that  liberty  and  religion 
were  indissolubly  connected,  and  he  refused  all  alliance 


ATTACHMENT  TO  THE  QUEEN  211 

with  Chartists  and  Republicans.  Even  at  the  time 
when  a  succession  of  kings  and  heirs  to  the  throne  had 
been  violently  hostile  to  him  and  his  cause,  he  had 
maintained,  with  few  exceptions,  a  remarkable  reticence 
in  speaking  of  the  sovereign,  and  when  Queen  Victoria 
came  to  the  throne  he  welcomed  her  accession  with  a 
perfect  transport  of  enthusiastic  loyalty.  The  fact  that 
her  sympathies  were  supposed  to  be  strongly  with  Lord 
Melbourne  and  his  Government,  and  her  quarrel  with 
Sir  Robert  Peel  about  the  Ladies  of  the  Bedchamber 
which  brought  back  the  Melbourne  Ministry  for  a  few 
months  after  its  defeat  in  1839,  had  no  doubt  somethins: 
to  say  to  his  enthusiasm,  and  he  made  full  use  of  the 
unpopularity  of  the  Queen  in  extreme  Tory  circles,  and 
of  the  foolish  talk  of  some  Orangemen  about  placing 
their  champion,  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  on  the 
throne. 

Both  in  public  and  in  private  his  language  of  per- 
sonal and  passionate  devotion  to  the  young  Queen  was 
more  like  that  of  a  knight-errant  to  bis  mistress  than 
of  a  sober  politician.  At  her  Proclamation  at  St. 
James's  his  mighty  voice  was  heard  above  all  others, 
cheering  and  calling  on  others  to  cheer.  Ireland,  he 
declared  in  one  of  his  first  speeches  after  the  Accession, 
was  deeply  loyal  to  her  young  and  lovely  Queen,  and  he 
could  get  500,000  brave  Irishmen  to  defend  her  if  she 
was  menaced.  For  the  first  time  in  Irish  history  there 
was  a  monarch  on  the  throne  who  was  in  full  sympathy 
with  Ireland;  her  ministry  was  the  first  during  six  cen- 
turies to  desire  honestly  and  faithfully  to  serve  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  all  good  Irishmen 
to  rally  round  her  throne  and  support  her  ministers. 
Notwithstanding  the  evil  reputation  left  by  the  party 
known  as  the  *  King's  friends '  at  the  beginning  of  the 
reign  of  George  III.  he  desired  at  once  to  christen  his 


212      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

own  party  '  the  Queen's  friends,'  and  he  made  this  his 
chief  election  cry. 

His  exultation  when  the  Queen  refused  to  yield  to 
the  dictation  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  about  the  Bedchamber 
Ladies  was  unbounded.  '  Hurrah  for  the  darling  lit- 
tle Queen  !'  he  wrote;  *  Peel  is  out,  Melbourne  is  in 

again The   scoundrel   Tories   insisted   on  her 

parting  with  all  her  Court.  She  has  show^n  great  firm- 
ness and  excellent  heart.  The  best  of  her  race,  the 
country  will  respond  to  her  call.'  '  We  owe  all  to  the 
darling  Queen.'  He  wished  her  to  be  asked  as  soon  as 
possible  to  visit  Ireland,  and  promised  her  the  most  en- 
thusiastic greeting.^  Long  after,  and  in  the  midst  of 
the  repeal  movement,  he  was  accustomed  at  the  monster 
meetings  to  call  for  cheers  for  the  Queen,  which  were 
enthusiastically  given,  and  he  seldom  lost  an  oppor- 
tunity of  inculcating  the  duty  and  the  policy  of  loyalty 
to  her  throne. 

He  never  indeed  had  any  real  wish  to  sever  the  con- 
nection between  the  two  countries,  and  in  strong  loyalty 
to  the  throne  he  saw  the  best  corrective  to  some  danger- 
ous tendencies  which  were  arising.  He  was  evidently 
prepared  to  support  extensions  of  the  royal  prerogative 
much  greater  than  English  Liberalism  would  tolerate. 
He  wished  and  hoped  that  the  personal  influence  of  the 
Queen  should  be  exerted  in  favour  of  the  Melbourne 
Ministry  and  in  opposition  to  the  Tories,  and  relying 
on  the  fact  that  it  was  an  old  prerogative  of  the  sover- 
eign to  send  out  writs  to  different  towns  or  counties, 
authorising  them  to  send  members  to  Parliament,  he 
even  maintained  that  the  sovereign  could  repeal  the 
Union  without  the  intervention  of  the  Legislature,  and 
restore  the   Irish   Parliament   by  simply  summoning 


^  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  178-185. 


HIS  VIOLENCE  OF  LANGUAGE  213 

three  hundred  Irish  constituencies  to  send  members  to 
Dublin/ 

He  was  far  too  able  a  man  not  to  have  understood 
that,  whatever  legal  or  historical  arguments  might  be 
advanced  in  its  favour,  such  a  course  was  practically 
impossible  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  he  can  have  been  wholly  insensible  to 
the  very  patent  fact  that  there  is  hardly  a  country  in 
the  world  less  suited  for  a  pure  democracy  than  Ireland. 
For  the  present,  however,  everything  that  strengthened 
democracy  there  strengthened  his  own  power,  and  he 
probably  did  not  greatly  look  beyond.  He  does  not 
appear  to  have  had  any  real  sympathy  with  those  who 
desired  a  Parliament  consisting  of  a  single  chamber, 
nor  was  he  altogether  opposed  to  the  hereditary  princi- 
ple in  an  Upper  Chamber.  One  of  his  favourite  pro- 
posals was  that  the  people  should  elect  as  an  Upper 
Chamber  150  out  of  the  existing  hereditary  peers,  who 
were  not  to  number  less  than  500.^  But  if  he  was  sur- 
passed by  many  in  the  violence  of  his  proposals,  he  was 
surpassed  by  few  in  the  violence  of  his  language,  and 
this  not  merely  in  Ireland,  but  in  England.  In  a  letter 
addressed  to  the  reformers  of  Bristol  in  1832,  he  called 
on  them  to  rescue  *  the  rights  of  Englishmen  from  the 
fangs  of  the  corrupt,  sordid,  peculating,  borough- 
mongering  aristocracy.' '  He  described  the  first  re- 
formed House  of  Commons  which  carried  the  Coercion 
Bill  as  consisting  of  '600  scoundrels.'*  He  brought 
down  upon  himself  a  formal  censure  of  the  House,  by 
speaking — not,  it  must  be  owned,  without  some  reason 
— of  the  *  foul  perjury  '  of  the  election  committees,  and 
his  language  in  his  political  tours  through  England  and 


»  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  152-153.  »  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  80-81. 

«  Fagin,  ii.  153.  *  Ibid.  p.  226. 


214      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Scotland^  if  it  won  for  him  the  cheers  of  many  crowded 
meetings  and  led  to  receptions  at  many  public  banquets, 
disgusted  moderate  men,  and  compelled  Lord  John 
Russell  on  the  part  of  the  Government  very  emphati- 
cally to  disavow  all  connection  with  his  mission. 

In  Parliament  explosions  of  this  kind  were  not  nu- 
merous, and  in  spite  of  great  provocation  his  language 
was  usually  moderate  and  decorous,'  but  he  always 
drew  a  broad  distinction  between  his  language  inside 
and  outside  the  House;  and  he  never  fully  realised  the 
deep-seated  Conservatism  of  the  English  nature.  He 
evidently  believed  that  the  burst  of  revolutionary  feel- 
ing that  accompanied  the  French  Revolution  of  1830, 
and  largely  helped  in  producing  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1832,  was  likely  to  submerge  the  chief  bulwarks  of  the 
Constitution.  In  a  very  private  letter  written  at  the 
end  of  1830,  and  relating  to  the  draft  of  a  will  which 
he  had  to  draw  up,  he  expressed  his  desire  that  the 
trustees  should  be  empowered  to  invest  *  in  private  in 
contradistinction  to  public  securities,'  as  he  believed 
from  the  aspect  of  the  times  that  public  securities  would 
soon  become  of  little  value,  and  that  there  was  a  great 
probability  that  a  large  part  of  the  interest  of  the  Na- 
tional Debt  would  be  repudiated."  *  The  interior  of 
England,'  he  added,  'is  in  a  frightful  situation.     I 


*  On  one  occasion,  in  a  de-  tions    of    members    of    that 

bate  on  the  Arms  Bill  of  1843,  House,      O'Connell   professed 

O'Connell  provoked    interrup-  his  willingness  to  retract  the  ob- 

tion  that  almost  drowned  his  noxious  expression,  but  added, 

voice.     When  this  had  a  little  'that  he  had  never  heard  of 

subsided  he  exclaimed  that  he  any  bellowings  that  were  not 

was  not  going  to  be  put  down  beastly,'       The    Speaker    de- 

'  by  beastly  bellowings! '  upon  cided  Ihat  the  epithet  was  con- 

which    a    member    rose    and  tary  to  order,  but  not  more  so 

gravely  observed  that  this  epi-  than    the    ejaculations     that 

thet  'beastly'  was  out  of  order  elicited  it.' 

when  applied  to  the  exclama-  ^  Fitzpatrick,  i.  233-234. 


DISLIKE  OF  ENGLISH  CHARACTER  215 

really  do  not  know  what  remedy  can  be  applied.'  *  I 
do  think/  he  wrote  during  the  Eeform  struggle,  we 
shall  live  to  see  the  hereditary  peerage  abolished  in 
England.'^  In  one  of  his  speeches  on  agricultural 
distress  in  1834,  he  justly  scandalised  the  best  men  by 
openly  advocating  in  Parliament  a  reduction  of  the  in- 
terest of  the  National  Debt  as  the  natural  remedy. 
*  The  interest  of  the  debt,'  he  said,  '  must  be  reduced. 
It  was  twenty-nine  millions.  Let  the  noble  lord  strike 
ofi  one-sixth  of  the  interest,  and  that  would  give  him 
four  and  a  half  millions  to  begin  with.  .  .  .  Talk  of 
the  cant  of  national  faith  indeed  !  the  national  faith  so 
called  was  national  injustice.  ...  If  at  the  end  of 
twelve  months  one-sixth  were  not  sufficient  let  them 
oS  another  sixth  from  the  interest.'  "^ 

His  dislike  and  distrust  of  the  English  character 
constantly  appears.  It  was  not  surprising  in  a  Catho- 
lic and  a  Celt,  who  had  grown  up  when  large  parts  of 
the  penal  laws  were  still  in  force  and  who  was  deeply 
imbued  with  the  tragical  history  of  Ireland,  and  it  was 
strengthened  by  the  treatment  he  received  in  England. 
It  was  with  considerable  reluctance  that  he  was  accepted 
as  an  original  member  of  the  Reform  Club,"  and  after 
his  attack  on  Lord  Alvanley  a  motion  was  formally 
made  and  powerfully  supported,  though  finally  rejected, 
for  expelling  him  from  Brooks's.  English  society 
looked  on  him  as  a  kind  of  Pariah,  and  he  was  not  in 
real  touch  with  any  English  party.  He  detested  with 
an  impartial  detestation  the  Tories  who  were  led  by 
Wellington  and  Peel,  and  the  Whigs  when  they  were 
led  by  Grey  and  Stanley.  The  English  Radicals  were 
his  natural  allies,  but  he  quarrelled  both  with  Cobbett 

»  Fitzpatrick,  i.  274.  '  Hansard,  Feb.  21,  1834. 

'  See  a  letter  of  Sir  W.  Molesworth,  quoted  in  Mrs.  Fawcett's 
Life  of  Moles2vort?i. 


216      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

and  with  the  Chartists,  and  even  the  philosophical 
Radicals,  who  in  many  ways  supported  his  policy,  were 
in  reality  very  alien  to  him.  Nothing  could  be  more 
unlike  him  than  the  cold,  doctrinaire,  uncompromising 
and  intensely  anti-ecclesiastical  spirit  that  prevailed  in 
the  little  party  of  the  elder  Mill,  Grote,  Molesworth, 
and  the  '  Westminster  Review. '  With  the  later  Whigs 
he  had  more  sympathy.  He  was  on  specially  good 
terms  with  Melbourne,  Russell,  Morpeth  and  Duncan- 
non,  and  he  made  a  great  sacrifice  of  popularity  and 
influence  in  order  to  support  them.  But  his  influence 
over  them  was  never  as  great  as  he  desired,  or  as  he 
wished  his  countrymen  to  believe,  or  as  the  enemies  of 
the  Government  always  maintained,  and  there  are  clear 
signs  that  he  was  much  disappointed  by  their  rule. 

The  Castle  government  under  Lord  Mulgrave,  Lord 
Morpeth  and  Drummond  was,  indeed,  very  sympathetic 
to  him.  A  moderate  and  equitable  bestowal  of  places 
among  his  followers;  the  elevation  of  a  few  Catholics 
to  the  Privy  Council;  the  removal  from  the  Bench  of 
a  conspicuous  Orange  magistrate  who  at  an  election 
dinner  had  toasted  the  battle  of  the  Diamond,  and  of 
two  or  three  others  who  had  displayed  a  violent  par- 
tisanship, indicated  a  new  spirit  in  the  administration. 
The  insane  and  wicked  custom  of  hoisting  a  flag  on  the 
Castle  on  the  anniversary  of  the  battles  of  Aughrim  and 
the  Boyne  was  discontinued.  The  constabulary  force 
was  reorganised,  and  a  large  infusion  of  Catholics  did 
much  to  mitigate  its  unpopularity.  Faction  fights  in 
the  south  and  Orange  processions  in  the  north  were 
suppressed  with  impartial  severity,  and  the  Government 
took  the  strong  and,  with  large  classes,  very  unpopular 
line  of  refusing  to  permit  the  employment  of  the  con- 
stabulary and  military  in  the  collection  of  tithes  except 
when  there  was  a  manifest  danger  of  a  breach  of  the 


THE  GROCERS'  LICENSES  217 

peace,  and  of  replacing  the  local  magistrates  by  stipen- 
diary magistrates  in  districts  where  party  feeling  ran 
very  high.  The  Mulgrave  Administration  was  furi- 
ously assailed  by  the  Tory  party  and  by  the  old  sup- 
porters of  Protestant  ascendency,  and  a  vote  of  censure 
against  it  was  carried  in  the  House  of  Lords,  but  it  sin- 
cerely desired  to  govern  Ireland  in  a  liberal  and  impar- 
tial spirit.  During  its  continuance  the  country  was 
politically  quiet,  and  crime,  though  in  some  forms  still 
terribly  rife,  perceptibly  diminished. 

O'Connell  supported  it  strenuously,  loyally,  and 
efficaciously;  but  the  general  policy  of  the  Whig  minis- 
try was  by  no  means  what  he  desired.  They  refused 
to  countenance  the  campaign  against  the  House  of 
Lords  which  the  Eadical  party  looked  on  as  the  natural 
sequel  of  the  Reform  Bill.  O'Connell  disliked  and, 
indeed,  in  his  heart  detested  their  Irish  poor  law.  The 
tithe  war  ended  by  a  compromise  which  was  profoundly 
distasteful  to  him,  for  it  left  the  Church  all  or  nearly 
all  its  revenue  while  depriving  it  of  most  of  its 
unpopularity.  The  Irish  municipal  reform  which 
O'Connell  greatly  cared  for  was  year  after  year  defeated 
in  the  Lords.  The  reform  of  the  grand  juries,  though 
very  beneficial  to  Ireland,  was  not  founded  on  the 
democratic  basis  which  he  had  desired. 

One  other  ground  of  difference  has  a  melancholy 
significance.  Much  credit  has  been  given,  and  not 
without  justice,  to  O'Connell  for  his  services  to  the 
temperance  cause  by  his  support  of  Father  Mathew. 
But  when  the  Whig  Government  abolished  the  grocers' 
licenses,  which  were  one  of  the  chief  sources  of  intem- 
perance and  especially  of  female  intemperance,  they 
found  in  O'Connell  a  strenuous  opponent.  The  grocers 
and  distillers  formed  a  large  portion  of  his  followers, 
and  he  took  up  their  cause  with  the  utmost  vehemence. 


218      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

*I  never/  he  wrote,  *in  my  life  was  so  anxious  about 
any  matter  of  detail  as  I  was  and  am  on  that  subject.'  * 
The  Whigs,  he  complained,  were  like  an  old  hat  stuck 
in  a  broken  pane  to  keep  out  the  cold — good  only  because 
they  kept  out  the  Tories. 

His  letters  in  1837  and  the  following  years  are  often 
in  a  strain  of  dee])  dejection.  Much  was  due  to  the 
recent  death  of  his  wife  to  whom  he  was  deeply  at- 
tached, but  causes  of  another  kind  contributed  largely 
to  his  despondency.  He  repeatedly  declared  his  readi- 
ness to  abandon  repeal  if  what  he  considered  justice  to 
Ireland  was  attained  under  the  Union,  but  he  soon 
found  or  believed  that  by  these  declarations  he  had  lost 
a  great  part  of  his  popularity,  and  it  was  still  further 
shaken  by  his  opposition  to  the  poor  law  and  by  his 
courageous  denunciation  of  trade-union  outrages.'*  He 
felt  the  change  acutely,  and  it  is  evident  from  his  cor- 
respondence that  money  troubles  were  rapidly  increas- 
ing. Tlie  heyday  of  his  popularity,  he  said,  was  gone. 
The  national  tribute  had  sunk  very  low.  The  country 
had  deserted  him.  '  I  vainly  think  that  if  Ireland 
thought  fit  to  support  me  I  might  still  be  useful,  but 
it  is  plain  I  have  worn  out  my  claim  on  the  people.' " 

He  had  founded  in  1836  a  new  society,  called  '  The 
General  Association  of  Ireland,'  for  the  purpose  of  ob- 
taining the  abolition  of  tithes  and  a  municipal  reform, 
and  a  new  *  Irish  rent '  on  the  same  basis  as  the  Catho- 
lic rent  was  to  be  its  essential  feature,  but  it  appears  to 


^  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  61-64,  141,  combinators  he  has  shown  his 

201.  usual  skill,  but  a  courage  Avhich 

^ '  What  a  curious  Actaeon-like  he  certainly  never  displayed  be- 

fate  would  it  be  if  O'Connell  fore.' — Archbishop  Whately  to 

were  to  be  murdered  by  a  mob  !  Senior,  Jan.  25, 1838.  Whately's 

He  has  been  in  no  small  danger.  Life,  i.  414. 

In  his  speeches  on  poor  laws  '  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  142,  195. 
and  much  more  against    the 


FINANCIAL  SCHEMES  219 

have  met  witli  no  enthusiasm  and  was  soon  after  dis- 
solved. Eepeal,  as  O'Connell  clearly  saw,  was  the  only 
question  for  which  the  people  really  cared,  and  he  was 
longing  to  take  it  up  again.  In  a  letter  written  in 
June  1838  to  Fitzpatrick  he  writes,  '  Every  day  con- 
vinces me  we  must  repeal.  There  is  nothing  else  for 
it.  Everything  else  is  trifling  and  childish.  I  will 
not  ask  anything  for  any  son  of  mine.  I  hate  the  idea. 
God  forgive  me!  but  I  am  heart-sore  at  many  disap- 
pointments. Yet  I  live  for  the  repeal.  The  enmity 
to  the  Union  was  my  first  effort;  it  will  be  my  last; 
and,  idle  as  it  may  seem,  I  do  hope  for  success.' ' 

Writing  to  the  same  intimate  friend  in  the  summer 
of  the  following  year,  and  under  the  bond  of  the  strict- 
est secrecy,  he  confided  to  him  that  he  was  profoundly 
unhappy;  that  he  looked  on  himself  as  in  danger  of 
ruin;  that  the  country  was  plainly  tired  of  him;  that 
he  did  not  believe  that  he  could  long  survive  the  deser- 
tion of  the  people.  '  It  weighs  upon  my  heart  and 
interferes  with  my  health.  ...  At  my  time  of  life 
mental  agony  is  poisonous.'  In  the  summer  of  1839 
he  went  into  a  religious  retreat  at  Mount  Melleray  in 
hopes  of  regaining  his  calm.  '  My  own  prospects  ap- 
pear to  me  daily  darker  and  more  dark.  It  does  mortify 
me,  but  it  does  not  surprise  me  that  I  have  exhausted 
the  bounty  of  the  Irish  people.  God  help  me  !  What 
shall  I  do  ? '  He  even  talked  of  retiring  finally  to  a 
monastery.  '  I  want  a  period  of  retreat  to  think  of 
nothing  but  eternity.' ' 

He  was  mixed  up  much  in  financial  schemes.  He 
had  become  director  and  leading  shareholder  of  the 
'  National  Bank,'  and  he  had  borrowed  largely  from  it. 
He  wrote  letters  urgently  dissuading  some  of  his  fol- 


^ Fitzpatrick,  ii.  69-72,  143.  'Ibid.  pp.  193-195. 


220      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

lowers  from  following  his  own  example,  and  impairing 
the  commercial  and  industrial  prosperity  of  Ireland  by 
encouraging  a  run  on  the  banks  for  gold.  He  was  vio- 
lently hostile  to  the  Bank  of  Ireland,  which  he  de- 
scribed as  an  '  Orange  Confederacy/  and  opposed  with 
all  his  power  the  renewal  of  its  charter.  He  made  a 
fierce  attack  on  Guinness's  Brewery,  and  an  attempt 
was  made  by  the  repeal  party  to  produce  an  organised 
resolution  to  boycott  its  porter.  Political  grounds  were 
put  forward  as  the  reason,  but  it  is  probably  no  breach 
of  charity  to  infer  that  it  was  not  unconnected  with  the 
fact  that  one  of  O'Connell's  sons  had  become  a  large 
shareholder  in  a  rival  establishment.*  In  1838  he  was 
again  offered  by  the  Government  the  office  of  Master  of 
the  Kolls,  and  there  was  some  conversation  about  offering 
him,  as  an  alternative,  that  of  Chief  Baron,  but  he  de- 
clined, though  not  without  reluctance  and  hesitation.' 
Some  of  his  followers,  apparently  with  his  approbation, 
had  taken  a  different  course,  and  Shell  received  succes- 
sively from  the  Melbourne  Ministry  a  Commissionership 
of  Greenwich  Hospital,  the  Vice-Presidentship  of  the 
Board  of  Trade,  and  the  permanent  post  of  Judge 
Advocate.  0' Council  still  supported  the  Government 
as  an  independent  member,  and  its  days  were  probably 
somewhat  prolonged  by  the  death  of  the  King  and  the 
accession  of  Queen  Victoria.  Still  at  the  election  of 
1837,  which  followed  the  accession,  its  majority  was 
only  about  25.  O'Connell  held  his  own  seat  at  Dublin, 
and  defended  it  successfully  against  a  petition.     His 

^  Fitzpatrick.  ii.  198-200.  offer,  but  Lord  J.  Russell  after- 

'  Ibid.  pp.  142-144.    See,  too,  wards   positively   declared   in 

O'Xeill  Daunt,  i.  36-37.    There  Parliament  that  no  such  offer 

is  some  dispute  about  the  al-  had  been  made.    See  his  speech 

leged  offer  of  the  post  of  Chief  in  Hansard  and  compare  with 

Baron.     O'Connell  more  than  it  the  speech  of  Hume  in  the 

once  spoke  of  it  as  a  distinct  same  debate,  June  2,  1843. 


MEMOIR  ON  IRISH  HISTORY  221 

followers  were  somewhat  increased,  and  the  feeble  Gov- 
ernment depended  more  than  ever  upon  his  support, 
but  he  could  not  fail  to  see  that  it  was  almost  at  its  last 
gasp,  and  he  was  himself  eagerly  looking  forward  to 
resuming  his  career  as  an  agitator. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  he  completed  the  first 
volume  of  his  Memoir  on  Irish  history.  It  never 
reached  a  second  volume,  and  it  cannot  be  said  to  have 
done  him  much  credit.  Its  spirit  is  well  indicated  by 
the  motto  from  Moore : 

On  our  side  is  virtue  and  Erin, 
On  theirs  is  the  Saxon  and  guilt. 

It  is  a  choice  specimen  of  a  kind  of  history  that  is  still 
abundantly  written  in  Ireland — a  *  history  '  consisting 
of  a  long  catalogue  of  the  crimes  and  oppressions  per- 
petrated by  English  government  in  Ireland,  aggravated 
to  the  highest  point,  and  with  a  complete  omission  of 
all  the  circumstances  of  provocation  and  palliation.  It 
is  a  picture  of  an  innocent  and  long-suffering  people 
persistently  crushed  by  almost  demoniacal  tyranny. 
In  the  tragic  history  of  Ireland  it  was  not  difficult  for 
a  skilful  advocate  to  select  authentic  facts  to  support  an 
indictment,  but  in  history,  even  more  than  in  most 
other  things,  half  truths  are  the  worst  of  falsehoods. 
The  book  was  not  published  till  1842,  when  the  repeal 
agitation  had  begun.  It  was  dedicated  to  the  Queen, 
and  a  profusion  of  italics,  capital  letters,  and  notes  of 
exclamation  were  employed  to  give  greater  emphasis  to 
its  charges. 

A  close  alliance  had  sprung  up  between  O'Connell 
and  Archbishop  MacHale,  one  of  the  most  violent  and 
seditious  of  the  Irish  prelates,  a  bitter  enemy  of  the  na- 
tional system  of  education,  and  a  strong  and  acrimoni- 


222     LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

ous  opponent  of  Archbishop  Murray.  MacIIale  com- 
manded at  this  time  almost  absolutely  the  representation 
of  Connaught,  and  O'Connell  always  wrote  to  him  in  a 
strain  of  what  a  Protestant  would  regard  as  servile  def- 
erence. He  endeavoured,  however,  though  with  little 
success,  to  appease  his  quarrel  with  Archbishop  Mur- 
ray, and  he  refused  to  follow  the  advice  of  MacHale, 
who  desired  him  to  urge  on  his  special  objects  by  put- 
ting pressure  on  the  Government  and  threatening  to  go 
into  opposition  to  them.  O'Connell  assured  him  that 
such  a  course  would  be  perfectly  useless — that  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  especially  Lord  John  Russell,  were  only 
too  anxious  to  find  a  pretext  for  resigning,  and  that  it 
was  idle  to  attempt  to  influence  or  intimidate  them. 
*I  know  it,'  he  said,  'from  experience.  I  have  tried 
it  and  totally  failed.'  *  Besides  this,  if  a  quarrel  broke 
out,  for  one  Irishman  the  ministry  would  lose  they 
would  gain  three  Tories.'  On  neither  side  of  the  House 
was  there  any  real  sympathy  for  Ireland.* 

He  was  longing  for  a  new  agitation,  and  in  the 
autumn  of  1838  he  founded  a  society  called  the  Precur- 
sors— usually  shortened  into  *  Cursers  ' — for  the  purpose 
of  renewing  agitation  for  the  repeal  of  the  Union. 

It  professed,  as  its  name  imported,  not  to  deal  im- 
mediately with  repeal  but  to  prepare  the  way.  The 
tithe  rent-charge  was  to  be  the  first  subject  dealt  with. 
Under  the  existing  law,  as  we  have  seen,  twenty-five 
per  cent,  of  the  original  tithe-charge  had  been  abolished 
in  consideration  of  the  landlords  undertaking  the  pay- 
ment of  the  remainder.  O'Connell  thought  that  by 
giving  the  landlords  another  fifteen  or  even  twenty-five 
per  cent,  he  could  induce  them  to  consent  to  this  re- 
mainder being  appropriated  to  purposes  of  general  util- 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  164,  168-169,  173-174. 


MINISTERIAL  CHANGES,  1839  223 

ity,  and  that  if  this  and  real  corporate  reform  were 
established  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  Irishmen 
of  all  persuasions  would  be  favourable  to  a  domestic 
Parliament/  Another  expedient  which  he  proposed 
was  that  the  tithe  rent-charge  as  a  whole  should  be 
diverted  from  the  Church  and  employed  to  lighten  the 
weight  of  the  new  poor  rate.  The  omens,  however, 
were  not  favourable  to  O'Connell.  The  Government, 
though  depending  on  the  votes  of  his  followers,  adopted 
a  very  menacing  attitude  towards  the  Precursor  Society, 
and  was  plainly  ready  at  all  hazards  to  defend  the 
Union. ^  The  Irish  gentry,  both  Catholic  and  Protes- 
tant, gave  no  encouragement  either  to  the  designs  upon 
the  tithe  rent-charge  or  to  the  repeal  agitation  which 
was  to  follow.  With  the  exception  of  MacHale  the 
bishops  were  very  doubtful.  O'Connell  complains  bit- 
terly of  the  apathy  in  Ireland.  He  found  some  of  his 
greatest  friends  as  torpid,  to  use  one  of  his  own  ex- 
pressive images,  *as  a  flea  in  a  wet  blanket.' 

He  urged  vehemently  the  necessity  for  renewed  agi- 
tation, but  'peaceful,  legal,  and  constitutional,'  an 
agitation  if  practicable  for  repeal;  if  this  proved  for 
the  present  impossible,  at  least  for  complete  corporate 
reform,  extension  of  the  suffrage,  larger  Irish  repre- 
sentation in  Parliament,  the  appropriation  to  public 
purposes  of  the  tithe  rent-charge.  All  this  would  tend 
to  lay  the  foundation  for  repeal.  He  very  emphatically 
disclaimed  any  wish   to   separate   the   two  countries. 

*  There  lives  not  a  man,'  he  said  in  one  of  his  speeches, 

*  less  desirous  of  a  separation  between  the  two  coun- 
tries; there  lives  not  a  man  more  deeply  convinced  that 
the  connection  between  them,  established  on  the  basis 


» Fitzpatrick,  ii.  p.  147-148. 

'See  a  letter  of  O'Connell  to  MacHale,  October  1838.     Fitz- 
patrick, ii.  149. 


224      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

of  one  king  and  separate  parliaments,  would  be  of  the 
utmost  value  to  the  happiness  of  both  countries  and  the 
liberties  of  the  civilised  world/ 

In  May  1839  the  Government,  being  all  but  defeated 
on  a  Jamaica  Bill,  resigned,  and  Wellington  and  Peel 
were  called  to  office,  but  after  an  interval  of  about  a 
fortnight  the  dispute  about  the  Ladies  of  the  Bedcham- 
ber gave  the  Melbourne  Ministry  a  new  lease  of  feeble 
life,  which  lasted  till  after  the  General  Election  in  the 
summer  of  1841.  I  have  already  described  O'Connell's 
exultation  at  the  conduct  of  the  Queen,  and  he  hoped, 
or  pretended  to  hope,  that  it  was  going  to  have  lasting 
effects  in  favour  of  the  Whigs.  In  one  of  his  letters, 
dated  February  1840,  he  solemnly  declares  his  convic- 
tion that  the  Tories  would  never  regain  the  government 
of  England;  *  Blessed  be  God,  the  Queen  is  exceedingly 
angry  with  the  Tories.'  If  he  really  believed  this  it 
speaks  little  for  his  sagacity,  but  other  letters  seem  to 
show  that  he  was  not  as  sanguine  as  he  appeared.  The 
Qneen,  he  said,  is  quite  true,  but  can  she  resist  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  ?  He  was  not  blind  to  the  fact 
that  the  Government  was  fast  breaking  up,  and  he  was 
more  and  more  urgent  on  the  necessity  of  organising  a 
great  agitation.^  There  runs  at  the  same  time  through 
his  letters  the  same  unpleasant  strain  of  pecuniary  need 
mingling  with  his  political  aspirations.  The  country, 
he  said,  was  tired  of  supporting  him.  The  Catholic 
clergy  are  apparently  holding  back  from  the  repeal  agi- 
tation. *  The  tribute  has  not  been  successful  this  year ' 
(1841).'  In  April  1840  he  founded  the  Repeal  Associ- 
ation. Every  one  who  paid  one  pound  a  month  be- 
came a  member.     For  a   shilling  he  was  enrolled  a 

'  See  a  letter  of  O'Connell  to  MacHale,  October  1838.     Fitz- 
patrick,  ii.  274. 
''  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  204,  222,  235,  237.     ^  Ibid.  pp.  306,  239,  260, 


REPEAL  AGITATION  225 

repealer.     The   rank  and   file  paid   one  copper  each 
month/ 

In  the  last  year  of  the  Melbourne  Ministry  the  long 
delayed  Irish  Municipal  Reform  Bill  was  carried, 
though  in  a  form  much  more  restricted  than  O'Connell 
had  hoped.  It  witnessed  also  a  determined  attempt  of 
Stanley  in  opposition  to  the  Government  to  carry  a 
Registration  Bill,  so  severe  in  its  provisions  that  it 
w^ould  have  practically  disfranchised  a  large  portion  of 
the  Irish  electorate.  O'Connell  fiercely  opposed  it  and 
it  was  for  the  present  abandoned,  but  the  attempt  prob- 
ably helped  to  win  converts  to  repeal.  A  Bill,  intro- 
duced by  Lord  Morpeth  to  neutralise  Stanley's  Bill  by 
extending  the  franchise,  was  defeated;  it  was  speedily 
followed  by  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence,  a  dissolution 
and  a  general  election,  at  which  the  Government  were 
utterly  beaten.  In  the  autumn  of  1841  a  strong  Tory 
Government  under  Sir  Robert  Peel  came  into  office, 
and  continued  unbroken  till  July  1846. 

A  new  phase  in  the  life  of  O'Connell  now  began. 
He  well  knew  that  he  had  to  face  persistent  hostility, 
and  he  at  once  flung  himself  into  the  repeal  agitation. 
The  wisdom  of  those  who  had  dissuaded  him  from 
abandoning  his  safe  Kerry  seat  for  the  representation 
of  Dublin  was  at  this  time  clearly  shown,  lie  had  won 
his  Dublin  seat  in  1832.  He  had  been  at  the  head  of 
the  poll  at  the  election  of  1835,  but  was  unseated  by 
petition.  He  regained  the  seat  at  the  election  of  1837 
which  followed  the  accession  of  the  Queen,  but  had 
again  to  bear  the  cost  of  defending  it  against  a  petition, 
and  in  the  election  of  1841  he  was  finally  defeated. 
Two  seats,  however — Meath  and  Cork — were  at  once  at 
his  disposal,  and  he  selected  the  latter.    He  maintained. 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  238  ;  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  59-60. 

VOL.  II.  15 


226      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

and  the  event  showed  with  great  truth,  that  not  only 
was  repeal  the  one  question  the  mass  of  the  Irish  people 
really  cared  for,  but  that  in  spite  of  the  present  hesita- 
tion the  Irish  priesthood  would  throw  themselves  into 
it.  Again  and  again  in  his  directions  to  his  agents  and 
followers  in  different  parts  of  Ireland  the  same  advice 
occurs :  '  Be  sure  to  have  everywhere  the  approval  of 
the  priests. ' 

It  became  evident  to  him  that  though  the  elements 
of  a  great  agitation  were  present,  it  must  be  an  agita- 
tion mainly  Catholic,  democratic  and  ecclesiastical. 
Nearly  all  the  members  of  the  Irish  aristocracy,  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  gentry  of  both  creeds, 
and  not  a  few  of  his  old  followers  deprecated  another 
agitation,  and  declared  in  no  ambiguous  terms  that 
they  would  be  no  parties  to  it.  Sheil,  the  most  elo- 
quent of  his  former  supporters,  was  utterly  hostile. 
The  Orange  spirit  in  Ulster  had  been  inflamed  by  the 
events  of  the  last  few  years  to  a  perfect  fury  of  '  No 
Popery '  fanaticism,  but  O'Connell  had  some  hope  that 
he  could  divide  Ulster,  and  that  the  political  liberalism 
of  the  Presbyterians  would  draw  many  of  them  to  his 
side. 

He  soon  found  that  he  was  mistaken,  and  the  Pres- 
b3rterians  had  at  this  time  among  their  ministers  a 
leader,  who  exercised  during  many  years  a  commanding 
influence  over  their  policy.  Heury  Cooke  was  a  man 
of  much  the  same  stamp  of  character  and  much  the 
same  order  of  ability  as  his  contemporary,  Hugh 
McNeill,  who  was  almost  equally  prominent  in  the 
Church  politics  of  the  Episcopalian  Evangelicals.  Both 
were  Low  Churchmen  of  an  extreme  and  narrow  type, 
and  also  passionate  politicians,  and  in  each  case  an  in- 
tense hatred  and  dread  of  Popery  was  the  mainspring 
of  their  policy.     Both  had  in  a  pre-eminent  degree  the 


EXPEDITION  TO  BELFAST  227 

charm  of  voice  and  manner  and  appearance,  and  were 
pulpit  and  platform  orators  of  extraordinary  power, 
and  both  united  with  very  real  ability  a  domineering 
temper,  a  singleness  of  purpose,  and  a  restless  and  in- 
trepid energy  which  gave  them  an  ascendency  over  large 
masses  of  men.  Cooke  had  already  almost  destroyed 
the  influence  in  Ulster  Presbyterianism  of  the  New 
Light  or  Arian  party  which  had  for  a  long  time  been 
considerable  within  it,  and  he  exerted  all  his  power  to 
prevent  any  sectional  Presbyterian  interest  from  divid- 
ing the  Protestants  of  Ulster.  He  was  on  terms  of  inti- 
mate friendship  with  Lord  Roden  and  the  other  Epis- 
copalian Orangemen,  and  he  steadily  preached  that  all 
minor  differences  must  be  sunk  and  the  whole  force  of 
Northern  Protestantism  united  against  the  incursions 
of  Popery,  and  the  danger  of  Popish  ascendency  which 
would  follow  repeal. 

O'Connell  in  the  beginning  of  1841  announced  his 
intention  of  visiting  Belfast  to  take  part  in  a  great  re- 
peal banquet,  and  it  was  intended  that  demonstrations 
in  his  honour  should  be  organised  in  the  chief  towns 
through  which  he  passed.  He  was  at  once  met  by  a 
challenge  from  Dr.  Cooke  to  discuss  publicly  the  ques- 
tion of  repeal.  It  was  drawn  up  in  insulting  terms, 
and  O'Connell,  in  a  speech  at  Dublin,  declined  it  in 
language  of  contemptuous  ridicule.  Much  ribaldry, 
about  equal  in  its  merits  or  demerits,  was  exchanged  at 
a  distance  between  them,  but  the  result  was  that  when 
the  time  for  going  to  Ulster  arrived  the  province  was 
in  such  a  flame  of  indignation  that  the  enterprise  could 
not  be  carried  out  without  imminent  danger.  O'Con- 
nell had  no  wish  to  produce  sanguinary  riots.  The 
public  demonstrations  were  abandoned.  O'Connell 
ordered  his  post-horses  under  another  name,  and  ac- 
companied by  a  few  armed  friends  and  with  a  careful 


228      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

concealment  of  the  hours  of  their  journey  the  party 
started  for  Belfast.  His  life  was,  or  was  believed  to 
be,  in  danger  from  bands  of  Orangemen  who  were  sent 
to  meet  him,  and  when  he  at  length  arrived  he  confined 
himself  to  his  hotel  and  refused  to  attend  a  repeal  meet- 
ing which  had  been  convened.  He  addressed  a  crowd 
from  his  hotel,  but  amid  such  clamour  that  he  was 
scarcely  heard,  while  banners  bearing  the  inscription 
'  Cooke's  Challenge  '  were  flaunted  before  him. 

He  appeared,  however,  at  the  great  dinner  to  which 
he  had  been  invited  and  was  received  with  enthusiasm, 
but  his  hearers  were  almost  all  Catholics.  He  addressed 
them  in  his  usual  strain  of  flattery.  Never  had  he  met 
men  after  his  own  heart  till  he  came  to  Belfast.  Never, 
or  scarcely  ever,  had  he  seen  such  a  galaxy  of  beauty  as 
looked  down  on  him  from  the  ladies'  gallery.  He  was 
very  scornful  about  '  the  boxing  buffoon  of  a  divine ' 
and  the  *  truculent  threatening '  of  his  followers,  but 
he  lost  no  time  in  quitting  Belfast  under  a  strong  police 
escort  for  Donaghadee  and  crossing  over  to  Scotland. 
As  he  started  on  his  journey  southwards  one  of  his  post- 
horses  suddenly  died,  which  Dr.  Cooke  assured  him 
was  a  providential  warning.*  It  was  plain  that  there 
was  a  spirit  in  the  Protestant  north  that  would  never 
compromise  with  repeal — that  was  prepared  to  resist  it 
even  at  the  cost  of  civil  war. 

There  was,  however,  one  passage  in  his  Belfast 
speech  which  had  a  truer  and  a  nobler  ring  than  the 
flattery  or  the  ribaldry  I  have  quoted.  It  was  when  he 
met  the  taunts  of  those  who  accused  him  of  having 
come  to  Ulster  as  the  agent  of  a  persecuting  and  des- 
potic Church,  of  a  Church  which  had  marked  its  steps 

^  Compare  for   the  two  ver-      O'Neill  Daunt's  Recollections, 
sions  of   this   expedition  Por-      i.   240-253. 
ter's   Life  of  Br.  Cooke   and 


O'CONNELL  ON  RELIGIOUS  LIBERTY  229 

through  history  by  fire  and  by  blood,  and  which  was 
and  ever  would  be  the  deadly  enemy  of  human  liberty. 
To  such  a  charge,  he  said,  his  whole  life  was  a  sufficient 
answer.  '  I  have  lived  but  for  the  promotion  of  free- 
dom, unrestrained  freedom  of  conscience  to  all  classes 
and  sects  of  the  human  family;  I  have  lived  but  to  be 
the  advocate  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  all  over  the 
world,  and  I  have  not,  I  think,  lived  in  vain.' 

The  claim  of  O'Connell  to  have  been  a  firm  and  con- 
sistent advocate  of  religious  freedom  is  a  jtist  one,  and 
it  is  from  this  aspect  that  his  career  has  much  more 
than  an  Irish  interest.  We  have  already  seen  the 
ardour  with  which  before  Catholic  Emancipation  was 
carried  he  supported  the  abolition  of  the  Test  Act  in 
favour  of  the  Dissenters.  He  was  a  steady  supporter 
of  the  admission  of  Jews  into  Parliament,  and  he 
boasted  that  this  was  one  of  the  few  questions  on  which 
the  Irish  members  were  unanimous.  He  was  one  of 
those  who  protested  against  a  British  soldier  having 
been  punished  for  refusing  to  pay  respect  to  a  proces- 
sion of  the  Host  at  Malta,  and  whenever  there  was  a 
question  of  religious  liberty  for  men  of  any  creed  or  of 
any  land  his  voice  was  always  heard  in  favour  of  lib- 
erty. He  had  at  first,  it  is  true,  looked  with  great  dis- 
favour on  the  French  Liberals  under  Charles  X.,  whom 
he  regarded  as  'atheists  and  infidels,''  but  when  the 
Revolution  of  1830  was  actually  accomplished  and 
proved  itself  not  inimical  to  the  Church  he  received  it 
with  delight,  and  there  was  no  feature  in  it  which  he 
praised  more  than  the  separation  it  effected  between 
the  Church  and  the  State,  which  he  predicted  would 
be  in  the  highest  degree  beneficial  to  religion.'  He 
welcomed  with  passionate  enthusiasm  the  Belgian  Revo- 

^  Maddryn's  Ireland  and  her  Rulers,  i.  107. 
'Fitzpatrick,  i.  232-224. 


230      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN   IRELAND 

lutioii  wliicli  emancipated  a  Catholic  country  from  its 
connection  with  a  Protestant  one,  but  at  the  same  time 
established  a  free  constitution  with  perfect  civil  and  re- 
ligious equality  under  a  Protestant  sovereign.  It  was 
one  of  his  first  and  deepest  convictions  that  democracy 
was  the  future  of  the  world,  and  that  it  was  in  the  in- 
terest and  in  the  power  of  the  Church  fully  to  accept 
its  conditions  and  to  mould  it  by  its  influence. 

His  speeches  and  letters  are  full  of  passages  assert- 
ing this  in  the  strongest  and  most  unqualified  terms. 
*  As  a  Catholic,  I  abhor  and  repudiate  persecution.' 
'  One  of  the  greatest  crimes  which  a  Christian  can  com- 
mit is  to  persecute  any  human  being  on  the  score  of 
religion.'  ^  The  princi23le  of  my  public  life  is  that  no 
one  Christian  should  be  compelled  to  contribute  to  the 
support  of  a  Church  to  which  he  does  not  belong  or  of 
a  religion  from  which  he  dissents.'  '  We  combine  the 
principle  of  the  fullest  civil  liberty  with  the  most  entire 
religious  fidelity  to  the  faith  and  doctrine  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church.'  '  It  is  to  the  Catholic  Church  that  the 
honest  spirit  of  democracy  ought  to  be  and  must  be 
most  useful.  In  an  honest  democracy  there  would  be 
no  paramount  interest  to  subjugate  the  Church  or  to 
seek  to  make  it  the  feature  of  the  State.  .  .  .  Under 
such  a  Government  the  Church  w^ould  be  free;  uncon- 
trolled by  temporal  enactments  and  totally  unchecked 
by  legislative  restrictions.  .  .  .  The  hierarchy  would 
meet  no  impediment  in  their  arrangements  touching 
spiritual  matters,  which  would  thus  be  for  ever  sepa- 
rated from  merely  political  concerns.  The  differences 
on  matters  of  belief  between  various  classes  of  Christians 
would  be  kept  open  to  free  discussion  and  tranquil  rea- 
soning. And  from  contests  of  that  description  the 
Catholic  Church  would  have  everything  to  hope  and 
nothing  to  fear.'     *  The  spirit  of  democracy/  he  used 


LETTERS  OF  DUVERGIER  231 

to  argue,  '  is  more  favourable  to  the  cause  of  morality 
and  religion  than  the  monarchical  spirit.' ' 

Other  passages  to  the  same  effect  might  be  easily 
cited.  Himself  the  greatest  of  popular  leaders,  O'Con- 
nell  had  no  fear  of  the  people,  and  the  fusion  of  de- 
mocracy and  Catholicism  was  the  ideal  of  his  life.  He 
was  accustomed  to  dilate  on  the  number  of  small  repub- 
lics that  flourished  in  the  middle  ages  when  the  ascen- 
dency of  Catholicism  was  most  complete;  on  the  rare 
cases  in  which  in  America  and  Europe  religious  toler- 
ation was  granted  after  the  Keformation  by  Catholic 
States;  on  the  many  instances  in  which  despotic  gov- 
ernments. Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant,  had  imposed 
restrictions  on  the  Church.  He  recognised  that  the 
democratic  system  of  the  Catholic  worship,  and  the 
organisation  of  a  priesthood  which  threw  open  to  all  its 
members  the  highest  posts,  were  in  harmony  with  the 
political  tendencies  of  the  time;  he  believed — and  with 
much  truth — that  both  the  dogmas  and  the  worship 
and  the  sacerdotal  organisation  of  his  Church  gave  it 
peculiar  powers  of  acting  on  great  masses  of  ignorant 
men,  and  he  hoped  that  it  would  become  the  guide  of 
the  newly  enfranchised  nations. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  an  attitude  of  this  kind 
should  have  been  very  strange  to  continental  observers, 
who  were  accustomed  to  witness  the  action  of  the 
Church  in  purely  Catholic  countries,  and  were  imbued 
with  what  were  undoubtedly  its  genuine  traditions.  A 
curious  and  interesting  pamphlet,  published  by  a  French 
gentleman  who  visited  Ireland  in  1826,  describes  the 
kind  of  language  which  from  one  end  of  Ireland  to 
another  was  used  on  Catholic  platforms  at  the  great 
meetings  for  promoting  Catholic  Emancipation.     Five 


»Cusack,  ii.  229,  285-290,  350,  412.  See,  too,  O'Neill  Daunt,  i.  303. 


232      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

propositions,  he  said,  seemed  to  be  generally  received : 
(1)  that  the  State  should  have  no  established  religion, 
but  should  preserve  neutrality  between  them  all;  (2) 
that  Salvation  was  possible  in  all  religions  provided 
they  were  honestly  believed;  (3)  that  it  was  a  wrong 
thing  to  convert  public  education  into  a  monopoly  for 
any  particular  class  or  sect;  (4)  that  the  spirit  of  prose- 
lytism  was  deserving  of  censure  and  each  creed  or  sect 
ought  to  remain  quiet  within  its  own  limits;  and  (5)  that 
in  order  to  keep  the  clergy  virtuous  it  is  requisite  to 
keep  them  poor.  He  had  heard  some  of  SheiFs  speeches 
against  Protestant  proselytising  societies,  and  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  in  Ireland  you  may  laugh  as  much 
as  you  think  proper  at  the  Bible,  provided  you  do  so 
in  attacking  Bible  societies.  On  the  whole,  he  said, 
Catholicism  and  Protestantism  seemed  in  this  country 
to  have  changed  places.  Protestants  were  dogmatic 
and  intolerant;  Catholics  had  suddenly  become  almost 
philosophical.^ 

The  picture  is  somewhat  overdrawn,  and  O'Connell 
would  certainly  not  have  subscribed  to  it  in  all  its  parts, 
but  it  undoubtedly  contained  much  truth,  and  O'Con- 
nell maintained  with  extraordinary  success  a  union 
between  the  most  fervent  Catholicism  and  a  genuine 
attachment  to  both  civil  and  religious  liberty.  He  was 
in  this  respect  in  close  sympathy  and  alliance  with  a 
brilliant  school  of  continental  Catholics  who  maintained 
the  paradox  that  Catholicism  was  the  natural  ally  of 
freedom,  and  the  more  tenable  position  that  in  the  new 
conditions  of  society  it  was  more  likely  to  flourish  by 
appealing  to  popular  favour  than  by  allying  itself  with 
kings  or  governments  or  aristocracies.  Gregory  XVI., 
it  is  true,  gave  no  countenance  to  the  dreams  of  Liberal 

^  Letters  of  Duvergier  on  the  State  of  Ireland  ;  Wyse's  Hist, 
of  the  Catholic  Association,  ii.,  Appendix  No.  xvii. 


LETTERS  OF  DUVERGIER  233 

Catliolicism,  and  he  condemned  freedom  of  conscience 
as  emphatically  as  his  successor  many  years  later  did  in 
the  Syllabus.  Lamennais,  the  great  leader  of  the 
school,  soon  perceived  the  hopelessness  of  his  task  and 
broke  away  from  the  Church,  but  Montalembert  and 
Lacordaire  remained  to  the  last  in  their  own  words 
'penitent  Catholics  and  impenitent  Liberals/ 

They  had  no  sympathy  with  the  Galilean  school. 
They  agreed  with  0' Council,  who  declared  his  detesta- 
tion of  the  'so-called  Galilean  liberties,'  which  in  their 
eyes  meant  the  enslavement  of  the  Church  by  the  State. 
Their  ideal  was  a  perfectly  independent  Church,  su- 
preme in  its  own  sphere,  but  asking  no  assistance  from 
the  secular  arm;  neither  patronised  nor  aided  nor 
coerced  by  the  State.  It  was  the  ideal  afterwards  pro- 
claimed by  Cavour  in  the  happy  phrase,  '  a  free  Church 
in  a  free  State.'  They  pointed  to  the  flourishing  con- 
dition of  the  Church  in  Belgium,  England,  and  the 
United  States,  and  they  contrasted  its  freedom  with  the 
many  trammels  imposed  upon  its  action  by  the  Catholic 
governments  of  the  old  regime  and  with  the  bitter 
hatred  and  the  corroding  indifference  it  had  then  to 
encounter.  In  Italy  kindred  views  were  maintained  in 
the  writings  of  Gioberti,  and  the  early  Liberalism  of 
Pio  IX.  kindled  unbounded  hopes  that  were  speedily 
overcast.  Nowhere,  however,  did  the  Liberal  school 
find  their  ideal  so  fully  realised  as  in  O'Connell — the 
Liberator  of  his  co-religionists — the  unflinching  advo- 
cate of  liberty  in  all  its  forms — a  Catholic  of  the  most 
severe  and  fervent  orthodoxy,  acting  in  all  his  policy 
in  the  closest  union  with  an  unpaid  and  independent 
priesthood,  and  at  the  same  time  swaying  with  un- 
rivalled power  the  democracy  of  his  country. 

Gibbon  has  well  remarked  how  vastly  the  reputation 
of  an  eminent  man  is  magnified  if  his  career  is  blended 


234       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

with  the  fortunes  of  a  great,  permanent,  world-wide 
organisation  like  the  Church  of  Rome.  Of  this  truth 
O'Connell  is  a  conspicuous  example.  Ireland  by  her 
geographical  position  is  far  removed  from  the  main  cur- 
rents of  European  life,  though  there  have  been  periods 
when  for  a  short  time  she  has  been  brought  into  the 
stream.  There  was  a  time  when  Irish  monks  played  a 
great  part  in  the  conversion  of  Europe  to  Christianity, 
and  w^hen  Irish  monasteries  were  renowned  throughout 
Christendom.  During  the  fierce  struggles  that  took 
place  between  the  Reformation  and  the  Revolution  of 
1688  Ireland  was  a  card,  though  not  a  very  important 
one,  in  the  game,  and  vast  multitudes  of  Irish  Catho- 
lics afterwards  enlisted  in  the  armies  of  the  Continent. 
But,  except  as  a  recruiting  ground  for  foreign  armies, 
Ireland  during  the  eighteenth  century  had  fallen  into 
complete  obscurity.  Swift,  Sterne,  and  Goldsmith 
were  probably  the  only  Irishmen  who  were  widely 
known,  and  they  were  only  known — as  they  would  per- 
haps themselves  have  desired — as  English  writers.  The 
Irish  Parliament,  its  jiolitics,  its  independence,  and  its 
abolition  excited  no  interest  beyond  the  seas,  and  it  is 
probable  that  there  were  very  few  men  either  in  France 
or  Italy  who  had  even  heard  the  name  of  Grattan.  But 
O'Connell  obtained  almost  from  the  beginning  of  his 
career  a  European  reputation.  As  the  champion,  and 
the  victorious  champion,  of  the  Church  he  was  ac- 
claimed wherever  Catholicism  prevailed,  while  the 
special  school  which  sought  to  ally  Catholicism  with 
democracy  looked  upon  him  as  their  highest  representa- 
tive. Montalembert  in  a  book  of  brilliant  and  impas- 
sioned eloquence  recounted  the  triumphs  of  the  Church 
in  the  nineteenth  century.^     In  that  stately  panorama 


*  Des  Interets  Catholiques  au  XIX^  SiMe, 


OBSCURITY  OF  IRELAND  BEFORE  O'CONNELL    235 

no  figure  stands  out  with  a  grander  prominence  than 
the  Irish  agitator,  and  when  O'Connell  died  Ventura 
in  the  capital  of  Christendom  preached  his  funeral  ora- 
tion, describing  him  as  one  of  the  very  greatest  Catho- 
lics of  his  age.  His  unique  position  as  the  untitled, 
unendowed  leader  of  a  great  democracy,  wielding  a 
gigantic  power  by  the  pure  force  of  his  eloquence, 
struck  the  imagination  even  of  those  who  cared  little 
for  the  religious  aspects  of  his  work,  and  it  is  no  exag- 
geration to  say  that  before  the  close  of  his  life  he  filled 
a  space  in  the  thoughts  of  men  which  no  Irishman  and 
very  few  English  statesmen  have  equalled. 

The  difference  between  the  English  and  the  conti- 
nental estimate  of  his  career  was  naturally  very  great, 
and  it  is  remarkable  that  Newman,  who  was  destined 
to  be  the  greatest  English  Catholic  of  his  age,  mentions 
among  the  deterrent  influences  he  had  to  encounter  in 
his  journey  to  the  Church  '  the  unspeakable  aversion  ' 
with  which  the  policy  and  acts  of  O'Connell  inspired 
him/ 

Among  Protestant  statesmen  there  was  a  widespread 
belief  that  he  only  used  his  religion  as  a  tool  for  attain- 
ing the  objects  of  his  own  selfish  ambition.  But  what- 
ever else  may  be  doubtful  in  the  career  of  O'Connell, 
it  is  quite  certain  that  this  theory  is  untrue.  No  one 
who  follows  the  details  we  now  possess  of  his  private 
life,  who  reads  his  unstudied  letters  to  his  dearest  rela- 
tions and  his  conversations  with  his  most  intimate 
friends,  will  doubt  that  at  least  from  an  early  period  of 
his  married  life  he  was  a  sincere  and  ardent  Catholic. 
In  the  busiest  days  of  his  professional  and  political  life 
he  was  exemplary  in  attending  mass  and  observing  the 
fasts  of  his  Church,  and  his  conversation,  though  often 


^  Apologia,  p.  223  (1st  Ed.). 


236       LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

violent,  indecorous,  and  scurrilous,  appears  to  have 
been  absolutely  free  from  any  taint  of  impurity  or  pro- 
fanity. His  most  private  letters  show  that  if  his  reli- 
gion did  not  correct  the  very  manifest  faults  of  his 
character,  it  had  at  least  sunk  deeply  into  his  nature, 
and  he  could  treat  religious  questions,  even  of  the  most 
delicate  kind,  with  a  tender  and  discriminating  touch. 
Some  letters  which  he  wrote  to  one  of  his  daughters, 
who  was  passing  through  a  phase  of  deep  religious  mel- 
ancholy, are  striking  proofs  of  this.* 

He  was  fond  of  theology,  and  sometimes  even  took 
part  in  public  controversial  discussions  with  Protes- 
tants. In  1826  he  published  a  long  letter,  addressed 
to  an  Irish  clergyman,  on  the  points  of  difference  be- 
tween the  two  Churches,^  and  in  1839  he  wrote  two 
violent  letters  of  controversy  against  the  Methodists. 
He  defended  in  conversation  the  orthodox  doctrine  that 
heresy  was  even  worse  than  immorality,  as  it  withdraws 
men  from  the  absolving  power  of  the  Church.'  It  was 
noticed  that  when  attending  Cobbett's  funeral  he  re- 
fused to  enter  tlie  Protestant  church,  and  Duffy  has 
observed  that  he  employed  his  despotic  power  in  the 
Catholic  Association  in  discouraging  and  repressing  in 
the  sternest  manner  any  tendency  either  on  the  part  of 
priests  or  laymen  to  revolt  against  episcopal  authority. 
He  showed  himself,  it  is  true,  at  one  time  very  jealous 
of  political  interference  on  the  part  of  Rome,  and  cor- 
dially subscribed  to  the  saying  of  O'JSTeill  Daunt,  *  As 
much  theology  as  you  please  from  Rome,  but  no  poli- 
tics; '  but  this  was  quite  compatible  with  the  most  ab- 
solute and  fervent  devotion  to  the  Holy  See  as  the  head 
of  the  Church. 


^Fitzpatrick,  ii.  187-190,  196-197.        'Cusack,  ii.  339-370 
'  O'Neill  Daunt's  Personal  Recollections,  i.  228. 


POWER  OF  THE  PRIESTS  237 

In  Ireland  he  made  it  his  first  object  to  act  in  the 
closest  union  wth  the  priests,  and  especially  with  the 
bishops,  but  it  would,  I  believe,  be  a  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  this  was  wholly  due  to  interested  motives.  It 
is  quite  true  that  he  made  an  enormous  use  of  the 
priests  in  organising  his  agitations,  collecting  his  trib- 
ute, and  furthering  in  every  form  his  interests;  but  it 
is  equally  true  that  he  relied  mainly  on  their  political 
guidance  and  power  to  moderate  and  restrain  the  demo- 
cratic movement  he  had  called  into  being,  to  keep  it 
within  the  bounds  of  the  law;  to  prevent  it  from  de- 
generating either  into  armed  rebellion  or  into  an  attack 
upon  property.  It  was  his  firm  and  abiding  conviction 
that  the  Irish  Catholics  must  find  their  political  leaders 
in  their  priests,  and  accustom  themselves  to  take  no 
action  without  their  counsel  and  approval.  He  would 
have  gladly  maintained  the  guiding  power  of  the  Irish 
aristocracy  and  gentry  if  they  would  join  him;  he  made 
constant  and  earnest  efforts  to  win  them  to  his  cause, 
and  in  cases  in  which  he  succeeded  he  seldom  failed  to 
place  them  in  the  forefront  of  the  movement;  but  it 
soon  became  evident  that  neither  the  Protestant  nor  the 
Catholic  gentry  would  favour  repeal,  and  he  accordingly 
fell  back  more  and  more  upon  the  influence  of  the 
priests.  He  sought  to  place  them  at  the  head  of  every 
political  organisation,  and  to  teach  the  Catholic  democ- 
racy to  go  to  them  on  every  emergency  for  advice. 

For  good  or  for  ill  he  succeeded,  and  this  is  perhaps 
the  most  distinctive  and  the  most  enduring  result  of 
his  career.  The  power  of  the  priesthood  in  Ireland  is, 
indeed,  sometimes  misunderstood,  and  it  applies  in 
different  degrees  to  different  fields.  In  matters  of  edu- 
cation it  is  practically  absolute.  The  mass  of  the  Irish 
Catholics  regard  education  as  essentially  a  Church  ques- 
tion, and  in  constituencies  in  which  small  farmers  and 


238      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

agricultural  labourers  form  the  immense  majority  of 
the  voters — in  a  country  in  which  there  is  scarcely  any 
wealthy  or  independent  middle-class,  and  in  which  the 
Catholic  gentry  are  few,  scattered  and  powerless,  priestly 
influence  over  Catholic  education  is  overwhelming. 

In  questions  of  nationality  and  in  agrarian  questions 
their  power  is  somewhat  less.  They  are  often  obliged 
rather  to  follow  than  to  lead,  and  they  incur  great  un- 
popularity and  loss  of  revenue  if  they  resist.  They 
have  never  succeeded  in  putting  down  secret  societies 
which  are  most  formally  condemned  by  their  Church, 
and  although  their  denunciations  from  the  altar  have 
unquestionably  led  to  many  agrarian  murders,  and 
their  habit  of  habitually  absolving  condemned  mur- 
derers without  requiring  from  them  any  public  ac- 
knowledgement of  their  guilt  has  exercised  a  moral 
influence  of  the  worst  kind,  it  would  be  unjust  to  at- 
tribute to  the  majority  of  the  priests  real  sympathy  with 
agrarian  crime.  But,  springing  for  the  most  part  from 
the  peasant  class,  they  naturally  share  their  feelings  for 
evil  as  well  as  for  good,  and  the  education  of  Maynooth 
has  not  in  this  respect  done  much  to  improve  them. 
Their  influence  has  been  not  only  anti-Protestant  but 
anti-English,  and  has  tended  powerfully  to  separate  the 
two  races.  There  have  been  brilliant  and  admirable 
exceptions,  but  on  the  whole  it  has  not  been  in  favour 
of  self-reliance  or  of  the  industrial  virtues  in  which 
their  people  are  deplorably  deficient,  and  in  these  latter 
days  they  have  generally  supported  the  attacks  on  prop- 
erty, contract,  and  industrial  freedom  which  have  so 
profoundly  debased  and  demoralised  Irish  politics. 
They  have  been  politicians  rather  than  theologians,  and 
the  fervour  of  Irish  Catholicism  centres  much  more  on 
the  Irish  priest  than  on  Rome.  At  the  same  time  when 
their  restraining  power  is  exercised  it  is  enormous,  and 


LETTER  TO  LORD  SHREWSBURY       239 

it  was  never  more  signally  exhibited  than  in  their  com- 
plete success  in  paral3^sing  the  rebellious  movement  in 
1848.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  changes  of  Irish  life 
have  greatly  diminished  it.  In  the  towns,  it  is  true, 
another  spirit  has  grown  up  under  Fenian  and  Ameri- 
can inspiration.  But  the  influence  of  town  life  which 
ie  so  increasingly  dominant  in  English  politics,  is  in 
Irish  affairs  very  small,  and  all  over  agricultural  Catho- 
lic Ireland  the  first  object  of  a  parliamentary  candidate 
is  to  secure  the  favour  of  the  bishop  and  the  leading 
priests.  This  is  mainly  the  work  of  O'Connell,  and  it 
broadly  distinguishes  Irish  democracy  or  Liberalism 
from  the  corresponding  movements  on  the  Continent. 

O'Connell,  as  we  have  seen,  had  complained  in  1840 
that  the  priests  were  holding  aloof  from  the  repeal  agi- 
tation,^ and  he  attributed  largely  to  their  apathy  and 
division  the  defeat  of  his  party  at  the  election  of  1841.' 
It  was,  indeed,  very  complete,  for  out  of  the  105  Irish 
members  returned  in  that  year  not  more  than  19  appear 
to  have  been  pledged  to  repeal.^  There  was  not  a  single 
new  recruit,  and  the  majority  of  those  who,  nine  years 
before,  were  avowed  repealers,  had  either  lost  their 
seats  or  abandoned  the  cause."  O'Connell,  however, 
truly  foresaw  that  the  hesitation  of  the  priests  would 
not  last  long,  and  in  1842  he  was  able  to  boast  that  his 
great  object  of  committing  them  to  the  movement  was 
substantially  if  not  completely  attained.  In  his  letter 
to  Lord  Shrewsbury,  which  was  published  in  that  year, 
he  states  that  eleven  of  the  Catholic  bishops  had  en- 
rolled themselves  as  repealers;  that  in  the  two  great 
dioceses  of  West  Meath  and  Ardagh,  which  comprised 
nearly  one-third  of  Ireland,  there  was  not  a  single  priest 
who  had  not  sent  in  his  contribution  to  the  Eepeal 

^Fitzpatrick,  ii.  239.  'Ibid.  p.  260. 

^  Gavan  Duffy's  Young  Ireland,  p.  479.      *  Ibid.  p.  42. 


240      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Association,  and  that  he  only  knew  of  one  priest  who 
had  declared  himself  publicly,  and  in  print,  against  the 
movement.  Nearly  four-fifths  of  the  priesthood,  he 
believed,  were  now  in  its  favour.  By  their  potent  in- 
strumentality the  organisation  spread  over  the  greater 
part  of  Ireland,  though  there  were  few  manifestations 
of  real  enthusiasm  until  the  latter  part  of  the  year, 
when  O'Connell  sent  a  number  of  '  Eepeal  Missionaries  ' 
through  the  country.  One  of  the  results  of  their  work 
was  that  the  repeal  rent  which  had  greatly  languished 
rapidly  increased.  But  O'Connell  himself  took  during 
this  year  a  comparatively  slight  part  in  the  agitation. 
He  spent  many  months  in  London  attending  Parlia- 
ment, and  during  the  greater  part  of  the  year  he  was 
Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin,  and  while  he  held  this  office  he 
abstained  from  repeal  meetings. 

He  continued,  however,  actively  to  advise  and  to 
organise,  and  his  letter  to  Lord  Shrewsbury,  which  was 
now  published,  was  one  of  the  most  considerable  and 
perhaps  the  most  valuable  of  his  writings.  That  great 
Euglish  Catholic  nobleman  had  strongly  censured  the 
repeal  agitation,  the  O'Connell  tribute,  and  the  alliance 
of  Irish  Catholicism  with  the  Whig  and  Radical  parties, 
and  he  was  also  absolutely  opposed  to  the  agitation  for 
the  abolition  of  the  Corn  Laws  which  was  now  rising 
into  prominence,  and  which  found  in  O'Connell  a 
strenuous  ally.  O'Connell's  reply  formed  in  its  orig- 
inal edition  a  pamphlet  of  not  less  than  180  pages,  and 
it  should  be  read  by  everyone  who  would  understand 
his  views  at  this  period  of  his  life.'  Much  of  it  can 
hardly  fail  to  be  repulsive  to  every  man  of  good  taste. 
It  is  full  of  the  coarse  abuse,  the  exaggerated  emphasis, 
the  tawdry  sentiment  that  so  often  disfigured  his  writ- 


^  It  has  been  reprinted  in  Miss  Cusack's  book. 


LETTER  TO  LORD  SHREWSBURY  241 

ings ;  and  the  strain  of  vulgarity  in  which  he  contin- 
ually harped  on  the  titles  and  social  eminence  of  Lord 
Shrewsbury  is  peculiarly  unbecoming  from  one  who  had 
every  right  to  consider  himself  as  belonging  to  the  old 
well-born  gentry  of  Ireland.  But  with  all  its  defects 
this  pamphlet  contains  pages  of  admirable  reasoning, 
supported  by  a  vast  array  of  well-selected  and  well- 
arranged  facts,  and  it  is  one  of  the  best  defences  of  his 
political  position.  Nowhere  else  was  the  case  for  re- 
peal and  the  evidence  of  the  declining  prosperity  of 
Ireland  under  the  Union  more  fully  argued,  and  few 
persons  can  read  it  with  candour  without  feeling  that 
on  this  question  O'Connell  was  animated  by  a  deep  and 
earnest  conviction. 

It  is  not  superfluous  to  dwell  on  the  evidences  of 
this  sincerity,  for  the  view  of  those  who  treat  the  repeal 
agitation  as  essentially  a  money  speculation  is  certainly 
not  without  plausibility.  From  the  confidential  corre- 
spondence of  O'Connell  in  1842  I  can  draw  no  other 
conclusion  than  that  he  was  on  the  verge  of  ruin,  and 
that  he  was  only  saved  from  bankruptcy  by  the  assist- 
ance of  his  friend  Fitzpatrick,  in  whose  hands  the 
management  of  the  O'Connell  tribute  established  after 
Catholic  Emancipation  had  been  placed,'  and  by  the 
vast  sums  that  the  repeal  agitation  placed  at  his  dis- 
posal. *Want,'  he  wrote  in  July,  'is  literally  killing 
me.  I  have  grown  ten  years  older  from  my  incessant 
pecuniary  anxiety.'  *I  write  overwhelmed  with  afflic- 
tion. It  almost  drives  me  mad.  The  enclosed  which 
I  send  to  you  in  the  greatest  confidence  explains  that 
S.'s  bill  for  420?.  due  on  Wednesday  week  comes  upon 
me.  I  write  again  to  him  to-day  in  great  anxiety.' 
Two  other  notes  payable  in  a  few  weeks  were  impending. 


*  Gavan  Duffy's  Young  Ireland,  p.  16. 

VOL.  II.  16 


242       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Fitzpatrick  appears  to  have  come  to  his  aid,  and 
O'Connell  writes :  '  You  have  taken  a  load  off  my  mind. 
May  God  bless  you.  I  was  actually  in  despair.'  *  It 
was  not,  however,  till  after  the  colossal  subscriptions  of 
1843  that  his  pecuniary  burden  was  substantially  re- 
moved. '  You  will  be  glad  to  hear,'  he  writes  to  Fitz- 
patrick  in  the  beginning  of  1844,  *  that  I  have  broken 
up  the  establishment  at  Darrynane.  The  saving  will 
be  greater  than  you  could  calculate.  I  ought  to  have 
done  it  sooner.  I  have  also  made  a  general  clearance 
of  my  debts,  current  and  ancient,  save  what  I  owe  to  the 
Bank.  I  will,  please  God,  reduce  that  to  a  manageable 
shape  when  I  arrive  in  Dublin.  There  is  not  one  single 
debt  unpaid,  nor  a  single  bill  out  .  .  .  save  one  for 
some  shillings  less  than  150?.  .  .  .  This  is  a  pleasing 
prospect,  but  to  make  matters  square  I  must  have  resort 
to  the  tribute.'  ^ 

On  November  1, 1842,  O'Connell's  mayoralty  ceased, 
and  after  a  short  holiday  at  Darrynane  he  flung  his 
whole  energies  into  the  agitation.  His  spirits,  as  was 
always  the  case,  rose  with  the  applause  of  great  multi- 
tudes; and,  with  the  tumultuous  excitement  that  he 
loved  the  despondency  that  had  seemed  lately  to  have 
settled  upon  him  disappeared.  He  had  not  yet  given 
up  his  hope  of  drawing  the  Protestants  and  the  gentry 
into  this  movement.  In  a  letter  written  to  one  of  these 
in  this  year  he  expresses  his  ardent  desire  to  win  to  the 
repeal  cause  '  The  Protestant  and  Presbyterian  popula- 
tion;' to  place  as  many  as  possible  of  the  gentry  of 
these  persuasions  on  the  committee  of  management; 
and  to  regulate  the  progress  of  repeal  by  their  counsel 
and  assistance;  and  he  adds,  *  I  most  ardently  desire  to 
prevent  the  hurrying  of  the  repeal  agitation  so  fast  as 


>Fitzpatrick,  ii.  289-290.  'Ibid.  ii.  313. 


RENEWAL  OF  THE  AGITATION  243 

not  to  give  time  for  all  classes  and  persuasions  of  Irish- 
men to  join  us.  All  that  is  wanting  is  time.  So  soon 
as  Protestants  of  all  sects  combine  to  obtain  our  legisla- 
tive independence  the  utmost  cordiality  will  prevail,  as 
in  1782,  between  all  Irishmen,  and  we  will  be  able  to 
make  the  mighty  change  with  perfect  safety  to  person 
and  property,  and  to  the  continuance  of  the  connection 
between  the  two  countries.'  ^ 

In  the  February  of  1843  he  brought  the  subject  be- 
fore the  Dublin  Corporation,  and  easily  carried  a  vote  in 
favour  of  a  petition  for  repeal.  His  conduct  as  mayor 
had  been  so  conciliatory  and  impartial  that  he  had  won 
much  popularity  even  among  his  opponents  in  that 
body,  and  his  speech  in  bringing  forward  the  repeal 
question  seems  to  have  been  better  than  his  speech  when 
introducing  it  in  Parliament  in  1834.  It  is  remarkable 
that  the  defence  of  the  Union  in  this  debate  was  en- 
trusted to  Isaac  Butt,  who  in  after  years  became  him- 
self the  leader  of  the  Home  Eule  movement,  and  it  is 
not  less  remarkable  that  O'Connell  predicted  that  the 
day  would  come  when  his  young  and  brilliant  opponent 
would  himself  be  ranged  on  the  side  of  repeal.  The 
discussion  in  the  Corporation  lasted  for  three  days,  and 
the  report  of  it,  which  was  afterwards  published,  be- 
came one  of  the  most  popular  manuals  of  the  repeal 
controversy.  O'Connell's  speech  was  very  powerful, 
and  it  was  characterised  throughout  by  a  rare  modera- 
tion of  tone,  by  an  extreme  and  evident  desire  to  allay 
animosities,  and  especially  to  win  Protestant  support. 
He  dwelt  greatly  upon  the  purely  legal  and  pacific  char- 
acter he  wished  to  give  to  the  agitation;  on  the  impossi- 
bility of  any  religious  ascendency  being  established  in 
Ireland;  on  his  determination,  while  pursuing  perfect 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  302. 


244      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

religions  equality,  to  guard  carefully  all  vested  rights, 
all  the  life  interests  of  the  clergy  of  the  Established 
Church.  *  Kemember,'  he  said,  '  that  I  respect  vested 
rights.  There  is  no  living  man  shall  with  my  consent 
or  with  the  consent  of  the  Irish  people  lose  one  particle 
of  that  which  he  now  enjoys.  I  claim  but  the  rever- 
sion.' ^  He  declared  that  it  was  his  desire  to  preserve 
the  Irish  House  of  Lords,  which  was  almost  exclusively 
Protestant,  intact  in  all  its  prerogatives,  and  he  reiter- 
ated his  abhorrence  of  violence  and  rebellion  and  his 
firm  adherence  to  the  connection. 

Having  prepared  the  way  by  this  debate,  O'Connell 
began  that  great  series  of  monster  meetings  which  forms 
the  most  striking,  if  not  the  most  really  important, 
political  demonstrations  ever  known  in  Ireland.  They 
were  not  new  things,  for  out-of-door  meetings  had  often 
been  held  in  the  struggle  for  Catholic  Emancipation, 
and  on  a  larger  scale  in  1840;  but  those  of  1843  far 
surpassed  their  predecessors  in  their  magnitude  and  in 
the  perfection  of  their  organisation.  In  order  to  devote 
himself  exclusively  to  the  repeal  agitation,  O'Connell, 
in  1843,  abstained  altogether  from  parliamentary  duties. 
During  this  year  he  occupied,  perhaps,  the  pinnacle  of 
his  fame.  There  are  three  great  instances  on  record 
of  politicians,  discouraged  by  overwhelming  majorities, 
seceding  from  Parliament.  Grattan  gave  up  his  seat 
and  became  utterly  powerless  in  the  country.  Fox 
retired  from  the  debates,  though  retaining  his  seat,  and 
he  too  became  for  a  time  little  more  than  a  cipher. 
O'Connell  followed  the  example  of  Fox,  but  he  drew 
with  him  the  attention  of  Europe.  In  no  previous  por- 
tion of  his  career,  not  even  when  he  had  gained  eman- 
cipation from  the  humbled  ministry  of  Wellington,  did 


*  Corporation  Debate,  p.  66. 


THE  MONSTER  MEETINGS,  1843  245 

he  attract  greater  attention  or  admiration.  Whoever 
turns  over  the  magazines  or  newspapers  of  the  period 
will  easily  perceive  how  grandly  his  figure  dominated  in 
politics,  how  completely  he  had  dispelled  the  indiffer- 
ence that  had  so  long  prevailed  on  Irish  questions,  how 
clearly  his  agitation  stands  forth  as  the  great  fact  of  the 
time. 

It  would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  conceive  more  im- 
posing demonstrations  of  public  opinion  than  those  vast 
assemblies  which  were  held  in  every  Catholic  county, 
and  attended  by  almost  every  adult  male.  They  usually 
took  place  upon  Sunday  morning,  in  the  open  air,  upon 
some  hillside.  At  daybreak  the  mighty  throng  might 
be  seen,  broken  into  detached  groups  and  kneeling  on 
the  greensward  around  their  priests,  while  the  incense 
rose  from  a  hundred  rude  altars,  and  the  solemn  music 
of  the  mass  floated  upon  the  gale,  and  seemed  to  impart 
a  consecration  to  the  cause.  O'Conaell  stood  upon  a 
platform,  surrounded  by  the  ecclesiastical  dignitaries 
and  by  the  more  distinguished  of  his  followers.  Before 
him  the  immense  assembly  was  ranged,  without  dis- 
order or  tumult  or  difficulty;  organised  with  the  most 
perfect  skill  and  inspired  with  the  most  unanimous  en- 
thusiasm. There  is,  perhaps,  no  more  impressive  spec- 
tacle than  such  an  assembly,  pervaded  by  such  a  spirit, 
and  moving  under  the  control  of  a  single  mind.  The 
silence  that  prevailed  through  its  whole  extent  during 
some  portions  of  his  address;  the  concordant  cheer 
bursting  from  tens  of  thousands  of  voices;  the  rapid 
transitions  of  feeling  as  the  great  magician  struck  alter- 
nately each  chord  of  passion,  and  as  the  power  of  sym- 
pathy, acting  and  reacting,  intensified  the  prevailing 
feeling,  were  sufficient  to  carry  away  the  most  callous, 
and  to  influence  the  most  prejudiced;  the  critic,  in  the 
contagious  enthusiasm,  almost  forgot  his  art,  and  men 


246      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

of  very  calm  and  disciplined  intellects  experienced  emo- 
tions the  most  stately  eloquence  of  the  Senate  had  failed 
to  produce.* 

The  greatest  of  all  these  meetings,  perhaps  the 
grandest  display  of  the  kind  that  has  ever  taken  place, 
was  held  around  the  Hill  of  Tara.  According  to  very 
moderate  computations,  about  a  quarter  of  a  million 
were  assembled  there  to  attest  their  sympathy  with  the 
movement.  The  spot  was  well  chosen  for  the  purpose. 
Tara  of  the  Kings,  the  seat  of  the  ancient  royalty  of 
Ireland,  has  ever  been  regarded  by  the  Irish  people 
with  something  of  a  superstitious  awe.  The  vague 
legends  that  cluster  around  it,  the  poetry  that  has  con- 
secrated its  past,  and  the  massive  relics  of  its  ancient 
greatness  that  have  been  from  time  to  time  discovered, 
have  invested  it  in  Irish  eyes  with  an  ineffable  and  most 
fascinating  grandeur.  It  was  on  this  spot  that  O'Con- 
nell,  standing  by  the  stone  where  the  kings  of  Ireland 


*  The  following  is  Bulwer's  description  of  the  scene : — 

Once  to  my  sight  the  giant  thus  was  given, 

Walled  by  wide  air  and  roofed  by  boundless  heaven: 

Beneath  his  feet  the  human  ocean  lay, 

And  wave  on  wave  flowed  into  space  away. 

Methought  no  clarion  could  have  sent  its  sound 

E'en  to  the  centre  of  the  hosts  around  ; 

And,  as  I  thought,  rose  the  sonorous  swell, 

As  from  some  church-tower  swings  the  silvery  bell  ; 

Aloft  and  clear  from  airy  tide  to  tide 

It  glided  easy,  as  a  bird  may  glide. 

To  the  last  verge  of  that  vast  audience  sent. 

It  played  with  each  wild  passion  as  it  went  : 

Now  stirred  the  uproar — now  the  murmurs  stilled, 

And  sobs  or  laughter  answered  as  it  willed. 

Then  did  I  know  what  spells  of  infinite  choice 
To  rouse  or  lull  has  the  sweet  human  voice. 
Then  did  I  learn  to  seize  the  sudden  clue 
To  the  grand  troublous  life  antique — to  view 
Under  the  rock-stand  of  Demosthenes 
Mutable  Athens  heave  her  noisy  seas. — >S'^.  Stephen's. 


THE  MONSTER  MEETINGS,  1843  247 

were  once  crowned,  sketched  the  coming  glories  of  his 
country.  Beneath  him,  like  a  mighty  sea,  extended 
the  throng  of  listeners.  They  were  so  numerous  that 
thousands  were  unable  to  catch  the  faintest  echo  of  the 
voice  they  loved  so  well;  yet  all  remained  passive,  tran- 
quil and  decorous.  In  no  instance  did  these  meetings 
degenerate  into  mobs.  They  were  assembled,  and  they 
were  dispersed,  without  disorder  or  tumult;  they  were 
disgraced  by  no  drunkenness,  by  no  crime,  by  no  ex- 
cess. When  the  Government,  in  the  State  trials,  ap- 
plied the  most  searching  scrutiny,  they  could  discover 
nothing  worse  than  that  on  one  occasion  the  retiring 
crowd  trampled  down  the  stall  of  an  old  woman  who 
sold  gingerbread. 

This  absence  of  disorder  was  partly  owing  to  the 
influence  of  O'Connell,  and  partly  to  that  of  Father 
Mathew.  His  extraordinary  career  was  at  this  time  at 
its  height,  and  teetotalism  was  nearly  as  popular  as  re- 
peal. The  two  movements  mutually  assisted  one  an- 
other, and  advanced  together.  The  splendid  success  of 
Father  Mathew  was  probably  owing  in  a  great  measure 
to  the  fact  that  O'Connell  had  strung  the  minds  of  the 
people  to  a  pitch  of  almost  heroic  enthusiasm;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  O'Connell  declared  that  he  would  never 
have  ventured  to  hold  the  monster  meetings  were  it  not 
that  he  had  the  teetotallers  *  for  his  policemen. '  There 
was  scarcely  a  Catholic  county  where  these  meetings 
were  not  held,  and  those  who  attended  them  have  been 
reckoned  by  millions. 

And  over  all  this  vast  movement  O'Connell  at  this 
time  reigned  supreme.  There  was  no  rival  to  his  su- 
premacy— there  was  no  restriction  to  his  authority.  He 
played  with  the  fierce  enthusiasm  he  had  aroused  with 
the  negligent  ease  of  a  master;  he  governed  the  com- 
plicated organisation  he  had  created  with  a  sagacity 


248      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

that  rarely  failed.  He  had  made  himself  the  focus  of 
the  attention  of  other  lands,  and  the  centre  around 
which  most  of  the  rising  intellect  of  his  own  revolved. 
He  had  transformed  the  whole  social  system  of  Ireland; 
in  some  respects  almost  reversed  the  relative  positions 
of  Protestants  and  Roman  Catholics;  influenced  deeply 
the  representative,  the  ecclesiastical,  the  educational 
institutions,  and  created  a  public  opinion  that  surpassed 
the  wildest  dreams  of  his  predecessors.  Can  we  wonder 
at  the  proud  exultation  with  which  he  exclaimed, 
'  Grattan  sat  by  the  cradle  of  his  country,  and  followed 
her  hearse;  it  was  left  for  me  to  sound  the  resurrection 
trumpet,  and  to  show  that  she  was  not  dead,  but  sleep- 
ing '  ? 

It  was  a  wonderful  position,  wholly  unlike  any  other 
which  any  popular  agitator  had  attained.  There  were, 
no  doubt,  great  exaggerations  in  the  numbers  of  those 
who  attended  the  meetings.  It  is  inconceivable  that, 
as  was  pretended,  1,200,000  persons  should  have  been 
ranged  round  the  Hill  of  Tara,  and  large  deductions 
must  be  made  from  the  estimated  numbers  on  other 
occasions,  but  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
almost  the  whole  adult  Catholic  population  in  three 
provinces  of  Ireland  assembled  in  these  meetings,  mov- 
ing in  great  disciplined  bodies,  countenanced  or  directed 
by  their  priests,  and  professing  the  most  absolute  and 
enthusiastic  devotion  to  their  chief.  It  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  such  vast  demonstrations  of  physical  force 
should  have  caused  much  alarm.  It  is  true  that  0' Cou- 
ncil had  always  and  in  the  most  emphatic  terms  de- 
clared his  abhorrence  of  all  attempts  at  rebellion.  Again 
and  again  he  repeated  in  his  speeches  that  he  was  '  the 
Apostle  of  that  sect  which  had  already  proved  that  the 
greatest  amount  of  freedom  can  be  achieved  by  the 
force  of  public  opinion,  and  by  the  peaceful  combina- 


THE  MONSTER  MEETINGS,  1843  249 

tion  of  religious  and  honest  men.'  *  My  disposition/ 
he  said,  in  one  of  his  speeches  in  184.3,  '  is  from  nat- 
ural bias  averse  to  deeds  of  violence,  and  the  certain 
knowledge  that  the  time  cannot  be  far  distant  when 
I  must  render  an  account  of  my  guardianship  before 
my  God  at  the  peril  of  an  eternity  of  weal  or  woe  ought 
to  make  me  circumspect  in  all  my  actions.  Soon  must 
I  leave  this  fleeting  scene.  What  is  the  world  and  what 
are  the  world's  glories  to  me  that,  in  order  to  grasp 
them  for  an  instant,  I  should  imperil  my  immortal 
soul  ?  Not  for  all  the  universe  contains  would  I,  in  the 
struggle  of  what  I  conceive  my  country's  cause,  consent 
to  the  effusion  of  a  single  drop  of  human  blood  except 
my  own.  Any  other  man's  blood  I  dare  not  spill.  I 
have  too  much  of  it  on  my  soul  alreadv.'  * 

But,  though  this  language  was,  I  believe,  sincere, 
the  danger  of  the  vast  popular  organisation  was  very 
manifest,  and  as  its  strength  and  popularity  increased 
the  tone  of  menace  became  more  and  more  apparent. 
It  was  noticed  that  the  cards  of  the  volunteer  repealers 
were  ornamented  with  pictures  of  pikes — that  they  gave 
the  names  and  dates  of  four  battles  in  which  the  Irish 
had  defeated  the  Danes  or  the  English,  and  also  some 
significant  statistics  giving  a  list  of  independent  nations 
which  were  inferior  to  Ireland  both  in  population  and 
wealth.  On  one  occasion,  when  a  great  English  news- 
paper proclaimed  that  steam  had  placed  Ireland  irre- 
vocably in  the  grasp  of  England,  O'Connell  retorted 
amid  the  rapturous  cheers  of  vast  multitudes,  that  if 
steam  had  bridged  the  Channel,  it  had  also  brought 
Ireland  close  to  America.  When  troubles  with  France 
arose,  O'Connell  said  that  the  first  shot  between  Eng- 
land and  France  would   secure  repeal.     The  mere  fact 

*  Corporation  Address,  pp.  212,  216.     The  last  allusion  is  to 
the  death  of  D'Esterre. 


250      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

that  in  county  after  county  and  over  the  space  of  many 
months  tens  of  thousands  of  the  population  were  accus- 
tomed to  march  to  the  meetings  in  disciplined  proces- 
sions, obeying  absolutely  the  word  of  order  and  with  all 
the  appearance  of  gigantic  armies,  was  in  itself  sufiB- 
ciently  alarming,  and  the  speeches  of  O'Connell,  though 
full  of  exhortations  against  violence  and  crime,  were  at 
the  same  time  eminently  calculated  to  inflame  the  pas- 
sions of  the  people  against  England.  Most  of  these 
speeches  consisted  of  eulogies  of  the  beauty  and  natural 
fertility  of  Ireland,  with  lines  from  Moore's  Melodies, 
and  much  flattery  of  'the  finest  peasantry  on  earth;' 
and  accompanying  this  it  was  the  constant  object  of 
O'Connell  to  represent  all  the  poverty  and  misery  of 
Ireland  as  due  to  English  tyranny. 

One  gigantic  meeting  was  held  at  Mullaghmast, 
where  he  recalled  with  graphic  eloquence  a  tragedy 
which  is  said  to  have  taken  place  there  in  Tudor  days, 
when  the  chiefs  of  the  O'Mores  had  been  treacherously 
massacred  by  En^^lish,  or  rather  Anglo-Irish  colonists. 
He  delighted  in  expatiating  on  the  violation  of  the 
treaty  of  Limerick  and  on  the  penal  laws  till  he  had 
worked  up  the  passions  of  his  Catholic  hearers  to  fever 
point.  Above  all,  he  dilated  on  the  iniquity  of  the 
Union,  the  shameful  means  by  which  it  was  accom- 
plished, its  effects  in  destroying  the  manufactures  of 
Ireland,  draining  her  of  her  wealth  by  increased  ab- 
senteeism and  increased  taxation.  He  asked  the  people 
to  observe  how  easily  the  vast,  organised,  obedient  mul- 
titudes he  had  marshalled  around  him  could  be  turned 
into  an  army  such  as  Wellington  had  never  commanded. 
'  We  are  eight  millions/  he  constantly  boasted;  '  there 
is  another  million  of  Irishmen  in  England;  there  are 
Irishmen  not  forgetful  of  their  country  in  the  English 
army.     We  shall  make  no  rebellion,  we  wish  no  civil 


MILITARY  TENDENCIES  251 

war,  we  shall  keep  on  the  ground  of  the  Constitution 
as  long  as  we  are  allowed  to  do  so ;  but  if  Peel  forces 
on  a  contest,  if  he  invades  the  constitutional  rights  of 
the  Irish  people — then  vcb  victis  between  the  contend- 
ing parties.  Where  is  the  coward  who  would  not  die 
for  such  a  land  as  Ireland?  Have  not  Irishmen  the 
ordinary  courage  of  Englishmen  ?  Are  they  to  be 
treated  as  slaves?  Will  they  submit  to  be  trampled 
under  foot  ?  Let  our  enemies  attack  us  if  they  dare. 
They  shall  never  trample  me  under  their  feet;  if  they 
do  so  it  will  be  my  dead  body.' 

Language  of  this  kind,  used  by  an  orator  of  consum- 
mate power  addressing  vast  masses  of  brave,  ignorant, 
and  excited  men,  could  not  fail  to  be  in  the  highest 
degree  dangerous.  What  O'Connell  himself  wished  is, 
indeed,  tolerably  evident.  He  had  certainly  no  desire 
to  produce  a  rebellion,  and  he  was  confident  that 
through  his  own  marvellous  ascendency  over  the  peo- 
ple, seconded  by  the  steady  action  of  the  priests,  he 
could  keep  the  movement  within  the  limits  of  the  law. 
It  was  his  own  favourite  phrase  that  '  there  is  a  moral 
electricity  in  the  continuous  expression  of  public  opin- 
ion concentrated  upon  a  single  point,  perfectly  irresisti- 
ble in  its  efficacy,'  and  he  was  producing  demonstrations 
of  Irish  Catholic  opinion  on  a  scale  and  with  a  dramatic 
effect  which  had  never  been  equalled.  But  if  he  did 
not  mean  to  use  force,  he  at  least  meant  to  threaten  it, 
and  to  reproduce  on  a  gigantic  scale  that  system  of  or- 
ganised intimidation  which  had  once  before  forced  the 
hand  of  Wellington  and  Peel — compelled  them  to  stul- 
tify their  whole  past  by  conceding  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion, because  to  refuse  it  would  be  to  plunge  Ireland 
into  a  civil  war,  or  at  least  to  make  it  absolutely  un- 
governable. The  evil  precedent  of  1829  and  the  earlier 
precedent  of  the  Irish  volunteers  were  constantly  before 


252      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

his  mind,  and  in  public  as  well  as  in  private  he  avowed 
his  belief  that  he  must  speedily  succeed. 

The  situation,  in  the  eyes  of  any  British  statesman, 
was  alarming  in  the  extreme.  It  could  scarcely  be 
doubted  that  if  O'Connell  had  given  the  word,  and  if 
the  priests  had  supported  him,  he  could  have  produced 
a  rebellion  which  would  have  been  far  more  formidable 
than  that  of  1798;  and,  whatever  might  have  been  its 
ultimate  result,  it  would  have  deluged  Ireland  with 
blood.  No  one  could  doubt  the  martial  tastes  and  apti- 
tudes of  the  Irish  people,  and  the  organisation  of  the 
great  meetings  showed  clearly,  what  all  good  observers 
have  noticed,  that  they  are  a  people  eminently  sus- 
ceptible of  military  discipline  and  singularly  capable 
of  acting  in  great  bodies.  But,  even  assuming  that 
O'Connell  was  inexorably  opposed  to  insurrection,  he 
was  now  sixty-eight,  and  men  might  well  ask  whether 
in  case  of  his  death  the  flame  of  rebellion  would  not 
break  out,  or  whether  even  during  his  lifetime  he  could 
restrain  the  people.  It  is  quite  certain  that  among  the 
populace  the  idea  that  the  '  Councillor  would  soon  give 
the  word  '  was  spreading,  and  that  tens  of  thousands 
were  looking  forward  to  rebellion. 

O'Neill  Daunt,  who  was  one  of  O'Connell's  most 
devoted  followers,  and  who,  like  him,  looked  upon  re- 
peal as  likely  to  be  accomplished  in  the  near  future, 
urged  that  a  system  of  universal  military  education  like 
that  existing  in  Prussia  should  be  established  in  Ireland. 
He  found  O'Connell  absolutely  opposed  to  his  idea. 
All  (he  said)  that  in  the  past  was  accomplished  by  mili- 
tary force  would  henceforth  be  gained  by  a  purely  moral 
movement.  Physical  violence  would  soon  become  obso- 
lete, and  the  great  bloodless  agitation  in  Ireland  was 
exciting  an  interest  abroad  which  Avould  greatly  acceler- 
ate the  movement.     O'Neill  Daunt  argued  that  if  re- 


MILITARY  TENDENCIES  253 

j)eal  was  granted  Ireland  might  be  invaded  bj  foreign 
enemies.  'And  if  it  should/  answered  O'Oonnell, 
'  one  week  would  have  Ireland  drilled  for  resistance, 
organised  as  we  are.  See  the  multitudes  I  had  at  Tara. 
How  easy  it  would  be  to  drill  them  on  short  notice  ! '  ^ 
The  '  Nation  '  newspaper,  which  had  been  founded  in 
1843,  was  rapidly  rising  in  circulation  and  influence, 
and  it  was  already  becoming  evident  that  the  brilliant 
and  enthusiastic  group  of  young  men  w^ho  wrote  and 
managed  it  were  by  no  means  disposed  to  be  absolutely 
subservient  either  to  O'Connell  or  to  the  priests,  and 
that  they  were  beginning  to  look  forward  to  an  armed 
conflict  as  at  least  a  possibility,  and  not  altogether  an 
unwelcome  one. 

The  extraordinary  spectacle  Ireland  at  this  time  pre- 
sented had  begun  to  excite  great  attention  in  other 
countries,  and  if  foreign  influences  reacted  on  Ireland 
they  were  not  likely  to  be  in  the  direction  of  peace. 
Subscriptions  had  begun  to  flow  in  from  the  United 
States.  An  American  President  had  declared  his  warm 
sympathy  with  repeal.  In  France,  Ledru-Rollin  wrote 
to  O'Connell  a  letter,  clearly  intimating  that  if  war 
broke  out  Ireland  would  not  be  unassisted  by  France. 
O'Connell  prudently  made  no  secret  of  this  offer  and 
of  his  reply,  in  which  he  declined  to  discuss  the  con- 
tingency of  the  Irish  being  forced  to  appeal  to  arms,  as 
'  it  was  impossible  that  it  should  arise,  the  British  Gov- 
ernment having  retracted  every  menace  of  illegal  force 
and  unjust  violence.' ' 

Two  successive  English  Governments  had  to  deal 
with  the  new  repeal  agitation.  The  position  of  the 
moribund  Melbourne  Ministry  was  singularly  difficult 

^  Recollections,  ii.  178-179. 
'  Duffy's   Young  Ireland,   315-324  ;    O'Neill  Daunt's  Becol- 
lections,  ii.  167-168. 


254     LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

as  it  had  long  been  in  close  alliance  with  O'Connell, 
had  offered  him  high  legal  office,  and  had  mainly  de- 
pended for  its  continuance  upon  the  votes  of  his  follow- 
ers. Lord  Althorp,  however,  had  condemned  the  repeal 
agitation  as  strenuously  as  it  had  been  condemned  by 
Lord  Grey;  and  the  Whig  Viceroy,  Lord  Ebrington, 
publicly  announced  that  no  appointment  or  other  favour 
of  the  Crown  should  be  conferred  on  those  who  encour- 
aged or  took  part  in  it.  But  the  chief  brunt  of  the 
conflict  had  to  be  borne  by  Peel,  who  came  into  office 
in  September  1841.  During  the  year  that  followed  his 
accession  Ireland  gave  him  little  trouble,  and  repeal, 
though  not  abandoned,  seemed  almost  dormant.  To- 
wards the  end  of  1842  the  repeal  cry  had  become  louder, 
but  it  did  not  yet  appear  very  alarming.  Leigh  Hunt 
compared  it,  in  the  '  Examiner,'  to  the  cry  of  the  Darry- 
nane  Beagles.  'The  fellow,'  said  O'Connell,  'made  a 
better  hit  than  he  intended,  for  my  beagles  never  cease 
their  cry  till  they  catch  their  game.'  The  gigantic 
meetings  in  the  spring  of  1843  at  once  showed  that  it 
had  taken  genuine  hold  upon  the  people,  and  that  great 
dangers  were  to  be  feared.  Troops  were  now  poured 
by  thousands  into  Ireland.  The  old  barracks  and  mar- 
tello  towers  were  put  into  a  state  of  defence;  stores 
were  accumulated  and  all  preparations  were  made  for 
meeting  a  possible  rebellion. 

In  May  the  Chancellor,  Lord  Sugden,  wrote  a  letter 
dismissing  from  the  magistracy  Lord  French,  who  was 
at  this  time  the  one  member  of  the  Irish  aristocracy 
who  took  part  in  the  movement,  and  declaring  his  de- 
termination to  act  in  the  same  way  in  the  case  of  every 
other  magistrate  who  attended  repeal  meetings.  O'Con- 
nell  and  more  than  thirty  other  magistrates  were  now 
deprived  of  the  Commission  of  the  Peace.  O'Connell 
at  once  pledged  himself  to  impeach  the  Chancellor  in 


DISMISSAL  OE  REPEAL  MAGISTRATES  255 

the  Irish  Parliament  which  he  believed  would  soon  be 
assembled,  for  interfering  with  the  subjects'  most  pre- 
cious right — that  of  petitioning  Parliament,  which  had 
been  expressly  and  solemnly  guaranteed  by  the  Kevolu- 
tion  settlement,  under  which  the  sovereign  occupied 
her  throne — and  he  at  the  same  time  ridiculed  the 
statement  of  the  Chancellor  that  these  meetings  had 
'  an  inevitable  tendency  to  outrage.'  More  than  twenty 
monster  meetings  for  the  purpose  of  petitioning  for  re- 
peal had  taken  place  within  the  preceding  three  months, 
and  not  a  single  outrage  had  been  produced.' 

A  stringent  Arms  Act,  modelled  after  the  expiring 
"Whig  Act  of  1838,  but  with  some  additional  provisions, 
was  introduced,  and  in  spite  of  violent  opposition  from 
Whigs  and  Eadicals  became  law.  In  May  Peel  declared 
in  Parliament  that  '  there  was  no  influence,  no  power, 
no  authority  which  the  prerogatives  of  the  Crown  and 
the  existing  law  give  the  Government  which  shall  not  be 
exercised  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  the  Union, 
the  dissolution  of  which  would  involve  not  merely  the 
repeal  of  an  Act  of  Parliament,  but  the  dismemberment 
of  this  great  Empire,'  and  he  added,  'I  am  also  pre- 
pared to  make  in  my  place  here  the  declaration  which 
was  made,  and  nobly  made,  by  Lord  Althorp,  that  dep- 
recating as  I  do  war,  but  above  all  civil  war,  yet  there 
is  no  alternative  which  I  do  not  think  preferable  to  the 
dismemberment  of  this  Empire.'  He  clearly  intimated 
that  he  would  not  concede  repeal  even  if  the  whole  rep- 
resentation of  Ireland  demanded  it,  and,  in  a  manner 
which  appears  to  me  to  have  been  grossly  unconstitu- 
tional, he  introduced  the  private  opinions  of  the  Queen 
into  the  discussion.  He  read  out  the  reply  of  the  King 
to  the  address  in  1834,  in  which  the  King  was  made  by 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  303-306. 


253      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

his  ministers  to  say  *  I  have  seen  with  feelings  of  deep 
regret  and  just  indignation  the  attempt  to  excite  the 
people  of  that  country  [Ireland]  to  demand  a  repeal  of 
the  Legislative  Union.  This  bond  of  our  national 
strength  and  safety  I  have  already  declared  my  fixed 
and  unalterable  resolution  under  the  blessing  of  Divine 
Providence  to  maintain  inviolate  b}^  all  the  means  in 
my  power.'  and  he  then  added  '  On  the  part  of  her 
Majesty  I  am  authorised  to  repeat  the  declaration  made 
by  King  William.' ' 

Meanwhile  the  Repeal  Association,  supported  and 
assisted  all  over  Catholic  Ireland  by  the  priesthood,  was 
rapidly  becoming  the  real  government  of  the  country. 
In  organising,  directing,  and  stimulating  a  great  popu- 
lar movement,  indeed,  O'Connell  had  now  great  experi- 
ence, and  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  in  these  arts 
he  has  had  no  superior,  perhaps  no  rival,  in  the  history 
of  the  world.  The  repeal  rent  was  rapidly  rising,  and 
it  furnished  the  movement  with  ample  resources.  In 
the  early  part  of  1842  it  is  said  to  have  amounted  only 
to  some  50^.  or  60/.  a  week,  but  it  was  more  than 
doubled  through  the  exertions  of  the  repeal  missionaries 
at  the  end  of  the  year,  and  in  the  two  weeks  after  the 
debate  in  the  Corporation  it  amounted  to  359/.  and 
3 GO/.  The  monster  meetings  rapidly  increased  it;  the 
week  after  the  dismissal  of  the  magistrates  it  amounted 
to  no  less  than  2,205/.,  and  in  the  course  of  1843  to 
nearly  50,000/. ' 

The  meeting  place  of  the  Repeal  Association  in 
Dublin  was  now  far  too  small  for  the  organisation,  and 
a  new  building,  called  significantly  *  The  Conciliation 
Hall,'  and  capable  of  holding  some  5,000  persons,  was 


'  Hansard,  May  9,  1843. 

'  O'Neill  Daunt,  RecoUedions,  ii.  141,  164.     See,  too,  Ireland, 
by  G.  G.  Porter,  p.  29-30. 


GROWTH  OF  THE  REPEAL  MOVEMENT  257 

erected.  It  was  admirably  adapted,  O'Conuell  said,  to 
be  the  temporary  home  of  the  Irish  Parliament  before 
the  old  Parliament  house  was  rearranged.  A  vast  cor- 
respondence maintained  the  organisation  over  nearly 
every  part  of  Ireland.  Re^^eal  wardens  in  the  different 
parishes  regulated  the  collections,  marshalled  the  local 
resources,  watched  over  the  interests  of  the  people. 
Repeal  libraries  were  established,  where  the  literature 
of  the  movement,  and  especially  the  'Nation,'  was 
eagerly  read.  There  was  a  repeal  police,  whose  busi- 
ness it  was  not  only  to  keep  order  at  the  meetings,  but 
also  to  go  to  every  district  which  was  the  scene  of  fac- 
tion riots  or  of  agrarian  crime,  and  in  the  name  of  the 
Repeal  Association  to  endeavour  to  allay  the  disturb- 
ance. *  Every  man  who  commits  a  crime,'  was  O'Con- 
nell's  often  repeated  maxim,  'gives  strength  to  the 
enemy.'  There  were  repeal  arbitration  courts  which, 
were  intended  to  adjudicate  disputes  without  bringing 
them  before  the  law  courts  or  before  the  magistracy, 
Avho,  after  the  removal  of  the  repeal  magistrates  and 
of  some  others  who  had  voluntarily  thrown  up  their 
commissions  when  these  magistrates  were  removed, 
were  more  than  ever  distrusted. 

The  whole  workmanship  was  indeed  a  masterpiece 
of  organisation  supported  by  an  orderly  and  re:i;i]lated 
enthusiasm,  which  made  it  doubly  formidiible.  In  May 
1843  Lord  De  Grey,  who  was  Peel's  Viceroy,  wrote: 
'  Matters  are  looking  so  serious  that  delay  or  temporis- 
ing will  be  ruin.  The  rapid  spread  of  the  repeal  agita- 
tion and  the  burst  of  audacity  which  has  broken  out 
within  this  very  short  time  are  astounding.  .  .  .  The 
Roman  Catholic  hierarchy  support  repeal.  Dr.  M'Hale 
remits  subscriptions  from  nearly  every  priest  in  his  dio- 
cese. America  gives  increased  support  to  it.  This  can 
only  be  with  separation  in  view.  The  corporations,  f  ol- 
voL.  n.  17 


258       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

lowing  the  example  of  Dublin,  have  nearly  all  declared 
for  it.  The  teetotallers  are  all  repealers.  All  Ireland 
is  organised  by  '*  repeal  wardens,"  sent  down,  ap- 
pointed, and  paid  by  the  head  association.' ' 

O'Oonnell  was  also  much  occupied  during  the  sum- 
mer of  1843  with  a  project  for  assembling  a  council  of 
300  men  representing  the  different  counties  and  bor- 
oughs of  Ireland.  This  was  a  direct  and  manifest  vio- 
lation of  the  Convention  Act,  but  O'Oonnell  seemed 
to  believe  that  it  was  possible  for  him  to  evade  the 
statute.  The  300  were  to  be  chosen  but  not  formally 
elected.  They  were  to  be  men  entrusted  with  the  duty 
of  carrying  to  Dublin  sums  of  not  less  than  100/.,  sub- 
scribed as  repeal  rent  in  their  neighbourhood,  and  they 
were  to  be  recommended  by  their  neighbours  and  fellow 
subscribers  as  trustworthy  men  to  carry  these  sums  to 
their  destination  and  discharge  all  duties  connected 
with  them.  Three  hundred  had  been  the  number  of 
the  volunteer  delegates  at  Dungannon  who  gave  the  first 
decisive  impulse  to  Irish  independence.  It  was  the 
number  of  the  members  of  Grattan's  Parliament,  and 
O'Oonnell  openly  expressed  his  belief  that  the  new  300 
might  easily  be  converted  into  another  Parliament. 
The  scheme,  however,  does  not  appear  to  have  met  with 
general  acceptance  among  the  repealers,  and  the  legal 
obstacles  to  it  in  the  existing  state  of  the  law  were  prob- 
ably insuperable." 

It  was  evident,  however,  that  the  crisis  was  rapidly 
approaching.  The  vast  meetings  were  not  only  mar- 
shalled like  great  armies — they  were  often  accom- 
panied by  bodies  of  several  thousand  horsemen,  who 
were  now  spoken  of  as  Eepeal  Oavalry,  though  this 

^  Peel's  Correspondence,  iii.  46. 

'  See  a  good  deal  about  this  proposal  in  Gavan  Duffy's  Young 
Ireland,  p.  305,  &c. 


THE  CRISIS  APPROACHING  259 

language  does  not  appear  to  have  been  countenanced 
by  O'Connell.  Plans  of  military  organisation  were 
openly  discussed  in  the  'Nation.'  Troops  of  British 
cavalry  at  the  same  time  hung  around  the  meetings, 
though  no  disorder  had  broken  out.  The  forts  and 
barracks  were  fully  prepared  for  war.  Ships  of  war 
were  multiplying  in  the  Irish  harbours.  The  declara- 
tion of  Sir  Kobert  Peel  that  he  would  prefer  civil  war 
to  the  concession  of  repeal  was  met  by  O'Connell  in 
terms  of  unqualified  defiance — in  language  which  plainly 
implied  that  though  he  would  not  initiate  rebellion,  he 
was  prepared,  under  certain  circumstances,  to  resort  to 
physical  force  iu  self-defence.  I  have  already  given 
specimens  of  such  language,  and  his  speech  at  Tara  was 
full  of  it.  He  did  not,  he  said,  disparage  the  English 
army;  they  were  the  bravest  in  the  world,  and  ho  well 
knew  that  Wellington  was  now  pouring  troops  into  Ire- 
land; but,  when  he  looked  on  the  vast  assembly  before 
him,  could  he  fear  them  ?  Roused  as  Ireland  was,  she 
could  furnish  women  enough  to  beat  the  whole  of  tlie 
Queen's  forces.  He  referred  to  a  famous  episode  in 
the  siege  of  Limerick,  when  Irishwomen  threw  them- 
selves between  the  contending  forces  and  helped  to  fling 
back  an  English  attack.  He  reiterated  with  great  con- 
fidence his  doctrine  that  the  Queen,  by  simply  issuing 
writs,  could  restore  tho  Irish  Parliament  without  the 
intervention  of  that  at  Westminster,  and  he  promised 
that  if  she  could  not  get  the  Irish  Chancellor  to  sign 
such  writs,  she  would  soon  get  an  Irishman  who  wouki 
do  so  to  revive  the  Irish  Parliament.  He  expressed  his 
firm  belief  '  that  twelve  months  cannot  possibly  elapse 
without  having  an  hurrah  for  our  Parliament  in  Col- 
lege Green  ! '  He  at  the  same  time  announced  that  all 
the  magistrates  who  had  been  displaced  on  account  of 
their  adherence  to  repeal  should  be  appointed  by  the 


260      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Eepeal  Association  to  settle  the  disputes  and  differences 
in  their  neighbourhoods,  and  he  called  on  all  the  people 
to  resort  to  his  new  Arbitration  Courts  and  not  to  the 
petty  sessions/ 

Many  interpretations  have  been  put  on  the  language 
of  absolute  defiance  with  which  at  this  time  O'Connell 
responded  to  the  declarations  of  the  two  Houses  of  Par- 
liament in  favour  of  the  Union,  and  to  the  firm  lan- 
guage of  the  British  Government.  Some  thought  that 
his  head  had  been  turned  by  the  extraordinary  labours 
and  excitements  through  which  he  had  been  passing, 
and  that  in  the  presence  of  these  vast  and  enthusiastic 
multitudes  he  had  lost  something  of  the  self-control 
with  which  in  critical  moments  he  was  accustomed  to 
measure  his  words.  Others  have  believed — and  in  this, 
I  think,  there  is  much  truth — that  he  underrated  the 
strength  of  the  character  of  Peel,  and  imagined  that 
when  that  statesman  found  himself  on  the  very  brink 
of  civil  war  he  would,  as  in  1829,  recede.  Others  sup- 
posed that  at  last,  and  after  long  hesitation,  O'Connell 
found  the  forces  driving  him  onward  growing  irresisti- 
ble, that  he  felt  himself  driven  to  the  alternative  of 
submission  or  war,  and  that  he  was  prepared,  if  need 
be,  to  give  the  word.  Senior,  who  was  at  that  time  a 
great  light  among  the  Whigs  of  the  'Edinburgh  Re- 
view,' adopted  a  conclusion  which  was  certainly  the 
most  erroneous  of  all — that  O'Connell  wished  a  politi- 
cal revolution  to  be  effected  by  a  great  agrarian  one. 
He  had  stated  that  fixity  of  tenure  must  be  one  of  the 
consequences  of  repeal.  Fixity  of  tenure,  according  to 
the  Whig  economist,  could  only  mean  legal  confisca- 
tion, and  O'Connell  had  only  to  proclaim  that  by  throw- 
ing off  British  rule  every  farmer  would  become  the 


^  Taylor's  Life  of  Peel,  iii.  328-232. 


THE  CRISIS  APPROACHING  261 

absolute  owner  of  his  land  to  make  the  Irish  revolution 
general/ 

A  juster  calculation  was  that,  whether  he  wished  it 
or  not,  a  collision  could  not  be  long  averted.  '  O'Con- 
nell  and  the  priests/  wrote  the  Chancellor,  'have 
arrayed  the  lower  orders  against  the  intelligence  and 
property  of  the  country.  You  can  hardly  overrate  the 
gravity  of  the  present  moment.  The  peaceable  de- 
meanour of  the  assembled  multitudes  is  one  of  the  most 
alarming  symptoms.  ...  A  settled  conviction  pre- 
vails among  them  that  repeal  will  soon  be  carried,  and 
repeal  means  what  every  individual  happens  to  de- 
sire. .  .  .  Such  vast  bodies  of  men,  entertaining  such 
opinions  and  ready  for  action,  could  only  be  kept  down 
by  the  influence  of  O'Connell  and  the  priests.  But  it 
is  impossible  that  they  can  much  longer  prevent  an  out- 
break. The  present  fever  heat,  though  it  may  exhaust 
the  patient  and  produce  a  corresponding  degree  of  lan- 
guor, is  more  likely  to  end  in  violence.  I  think  a 
short  time  will  decide.  .  .  .  Repeal  now  means  sepa- 
ration and  hatred  to  the  British  connection.'^ 

The  difficulties  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  were  of  many 
kinds.  Formidable  and  dangerous  as  was  the  repeal 
organisation,  it  was  difficult  to  maintain  that  an  organi- 
sation which  was  ostensibly  intended  only  to  petition 
for  the  repeal  of  an  Act  of  Parliament  was  in  its  nature 
illegal,  and  the  difficulty  was  the  more  serious  because 
the  Anti-Cornlaw  League  which  was  beginning  to  be 
a  great  power  in  England  was  admittedly  formed  after 
its  model.  It  was  not  easy  without  an  appearance  of 
injustice  to  suppress  the  one  and  to  leave  the  other  un- 
touched.'    The  complete  absence  of  disorder  at  the 


*  Senior,  Journals  and  Essays  on  Ireland,  i.  20. 

'  Peel's  Corresponde7ice,  iii.  48,  49.  '  Ibid.  p.  47. 


262      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

monster  meetings,  while  it  showed  the  perfection  of 
the  discipline  that  had  been  attained  under  the  double 
influence  of  O'Connell  and  Father  Mathew,  took  away 
the  most  natural  pretext  for  interfering  with  them,  and 
O'Connell  seldom  failed  to  mingle  expressions  of  the 
most  fervent  attachment  to  the  Queen  with  the  most 
furious  denunciations  of  England  and  of  her  ministers. 
Peel's  Irish  Government  was  neither  strong  nor  harmo- 
nious. The  Lord  Lieutenant,  Lord  de  Grey,  and  Elliot, 
the  Chief  Secretary,  differed  in  policy  and  had  little 
personal  sympathy,  and  the  Chancellor,  though  an  ex- 
cellent lawyer,  was  tactless  and  inethcient  as  a  political 
guide.  The  debates  on  the  Arms  Bill  showed  that  the 
Opposition  in  Parliament  were  not  likely  to  support  ex- 
ceptional legislation  suppressing  the  Repeal  Association, 
and  there  were  powerful  working-class  bodies  in  Eng- 
land who  had  much  sympathy  with  O'Connell. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that,  except  for  the  pass- 
ing of  the  Arms  Act  and  the  declaration  of  the  two 
Houses  in  favour  of  maintaining  the  Union,  nothing 
had  been  done  when  Parliament  was  prorogued  in 
August  to  carry  out  the  promise  of  suppressing  the  agi- 
tation, though  the  presence  of  35,000  troops  and  the 
other  military  measures  of  precaution  that  had  been 
taken  would  probably  have  been  sufficient  to  crush  in 
a  short  time  rebellion,  if  it  broke  out.  Wellington  ap- 
pears to  have  himself  desired  to  assume  at  this  time  the 
government  of  Ireland,  but  Peel  and  Graham,  though 
admitting  that  his  presence  would  be  invaluable  if  there 
was  a  military  defection  to  be  checked  or  an  open  re- 
bellion to  be  suppressed,  altogether  deprecated  this 
course,*  and  were  anxious  to  do  nothing  to  precipitate 
a  conflict.     From  spring  to  autumn  the  monster  meet- 


*  FeeVs_Co7'res^onde7ice,  iii.  63-64. 


THE  CLONTARF  MEETING  263 

ings  proceeded  in  an  iininterrnpted  course.  The  long 
days  and  the  fine  weather  were  now  drawing  to  a  close, 
and  it  was  resolved  to  complete  the  series  by  a  meeting 
at  Clontarf,  which  it  was  thought  would  be  the  climax 
of  the  whole. 

It  was  to  be  held  on  Sunday,  October  8, 1843.  The 
place  was  selected  as  in  the  convenient  neighbourhood 
of  Dublin,  and  partly  also  as  being  associated  with  per- 
haps the  most  glorious  military  event  in  Irish  history, 
for  it  was  the  scene  of  the  greatest  battle  ever  fought 
on  Irish  soil,  when  Brian  Boru  finally  shattered  the 
power  of  the  Danes.  The  meeting  had  been  announced 
a  fortnight  before,  and  there  were  no  signs  that  Gov- 
ernment intended  to  prohibit  it.  Vast  preparations 
were  made  for  bringing  in  gigantic  throngs,  not  only 
from  Dublin  and  its  neighbourhood,  but  from  distant 
parts  of  the  island,  and  even  from  England  and  Scot- 
land. But  a  day  or  two  before  the  appointed  meeting, 
it  was  noticed  that  troops  were  converging  from  many 
quarters.  Ships  of  war  entered  Dublin  Bay.  The 
guns  of  the  Pigeon-house  were  turned  towards  Clon- 
tarf. On  Friday  evening  it  was  stated  in  a  newspaper 
that  the  meeting  would  be  proclaimed,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  Saturday  afternoon  that  a  proclamation  for- 
bidding it  appeared. 

The  difficulty  of  carrying  out  this  prohibition  with- 
out bloodshed  was  very  great.  O'Connell  at  once 
ordered  that  the  proclamation  should  be  obeyed.  The 
platforms  were  removed.  All  the  agencies  of  the  or- 
ganisation were  employed  to  warn  the  people  against 
attending  the  meeting  and  against  every  kind  of  resist- 
ance or  outrage,  and  they  succeeded.  Horsemen  were 
sent  long  distances  from  Dublin  to  intercept  and  warn 
the  country  people  who  were  already  trooping  in.  The 
day  passed  without  a  meeting  and  without  disturbance. 


264      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

and  tlie  vast  multitudes  acted  with  perfect  order.  In 
no  incident  of  the  campaign  had  the  perfection  and 
power  of  the  repeal  organisation  been  so  clearly  shown. 
The  Government  were  severely  blamed  for  having 
delayed  the  suppression  of  the  meeting  to  so  late  a 
period  that  there  was  imminent  danger  of  a  sanguinary 
collision.  If  they  had  given  more  timely  notice  another 
danger  would  have  arisen,  for  there  would  have  been 
grave  reason  to  fear  some  movement  of  organised  and 
preconcerted  opposition.  O'Connell  acted  in  the  only 
way  which  was  really  reasonable,  and  in  full  accordance 
with  his  uniform  desire  to  prevent  armed  collision  and 
bloodshed.  To  have  endeavoured  to  hold  the  meeting 
on  ground  which  was  occupied  by  a  great  body  of  troops 
and  commanded  by  cannon  would  have  only  led  to  vise- 
less  and  hopeless  bloodshed,  and  the  firmness,  prompt- 
ness, and  skill  with  which  he  took  his  measures,  induc- 
ing the  people  to  abstain  from  giving  the  Government 
any  pretext  for  violence,  can  hardly  be  too  highly 
praised.  Yet  it  is  certain  that  what  had  taken  place 
was  a  great  shock  to  his  power.  The  language  he  had 
recently  been  using  clearly  implied  that  the  monster 
meetings  were,  in  his  judgment,  perfectly  legal  and 
pacific;  that  he  was  determined  that  they  should  be 
held  for  no  other  than  a  constitutional  and  pacific  pur- 
pose, and  should  not  be  allowed  to  degenerate  into  any 
kind  of  violence  and  outrage,  but  that  if  they  were 
attacked  thev  would  resist  and  would  not  suffer  them- 
selves  to  be  illegally  suppressed.  He  had  challenged 
Peel  and  Wellington  to  interfere  with  them,  and  they 
had  done  so,  and  had  done  so  with  success.  The  proc- 
lamation that  suppressed  the  Clontarf  meeting  was, 
according  to  O'Connell,  absolutely  illegal,  but  it  was 
successful.  O'Connell  had  recoiled  before  it.  The 
powerful  and  enthusiastic  party  which  found  its  mouth- 


O'CONNELL'S  TRIAL  265 

piece  in  the  *  Nation '  were  perfectly  prepared  to  take 
arms  if  O'Connell  would  support  them,  and  they 
deemed  his  policy  a  humiliation  if  not  a  betrayal,  and 
from  this  date  his  ascendency  over  them  was  broken. 
The  vast  silent  masses  led  by  their  priests  still  trusted 
him  with  an  implicit  trust  and  looked  forward  to  his 
ultimate  triumph,  yet  they  too  were  dimly  conscious 
that  a  challenge  had  been  given  which  had  not  been 
accepted,  that  there  had  been  a  rebuff  and  a  defeat. 

The  Government  swiftly  followed  up  their  blow, 
and  a  prosecution  for  conspiracy  and  sedition  was  at 
once  directed  against  O'Connell  and  a  number  of  his 
colleagues,  including  Gavan  Duffy,  the  editor  of  the 
'  Nation.'  They  were  arrested  on  October  14,  but  were 
at  once  admitted  to  bail.  The  trial  did  not  come  on 
till  the  beginning  of  1844,  and  it  lasted  for  twenty-five 
days.  The  indictment  was  of  portentous  length,  and 
no  less  than  eleven  counts  were  submitted  to  the  jury. 
The  monotony  of  the  trial  was  relieved  by  much  bril- 
liant oratory,  by  a  great  deal  of  very  curious  cross- 
examination,  and  by  a  strange  episode  occasioned  by 
the  Attorney-General,  who  sent  a  challenge  to  one  of 
the  opposing  counsel,  which  that  gentleman  submitted 
to  the  Bench.  The  two  most  eloquent  speeches  deliv- 
ered were  beyond  all  question  those  of  Shell  and  White- 
side. A  great  number  of  charges  have  been  brought 
against  this  trial  which  have  elicited  much  controversy. 
It  is  sufficient  to  state  the  facts  that  are  admitted.  An 
error,  which  at  least  one  Irish  judge  believed  not  to 
have  been  unintentional,  was  made  in  the  panel  of  the 
jury,  and  by  this  error  more  than  twenty  Catholics 
were  excluded  from  the  juror  list.  Of  the  Catholics 
whose  names  were  called  all  were  objected  to  by  the 
Government  prosecutor,  and  accordingly  there  was  not 
a  single  Roman  Catholic  on  the  jury  which  tried  the 


266      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

greatest  Catholic  of  bis  age  in  the  metropolis  of  an 
essentially  Catholic  country,  and  at  a  time  when  secta- 
rian animosity  ran  very  high.  After  a  charge  from  the 
Chief  Justice,  which  Macaulay  compared  to  the  dis- 
plays of  judicial  partisanship  in  the  State  trials  of 
Charles  II.,  O'Connell  was  found  guilty  on  nearly  all 
the  counts  of  the  indictment,  but  sentence  was  deferred 
till  the  following  term. 

If  we  try  to  sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  conclusions 
that  may  be  derived  from  the  perusal  of  this  long  trial, 
the  first  point  which  strikes  us  is  that  it  produced  no 
facts  that  were  not  previously  known.  It  is,  I  think, 
evident  from  it  that  O'Connell  had  never  seriously  de- 
signed rebellion;  that  he  had  taken  no  measures  what- 
ever to  arm  the  people;  that  he  had  entered  into  no 
secret  conspiracies  of  any  kind.  According  to  his  uni- 
form maxim,  all  his  proceedings  had  been  in  the  light 
of  day  and  his  motives  and  objects  had  been  candidly 
avowed.  It  was  at  the  same  time  abundantly  proved 
that  he  had  on  numerous  occasions,  iu  nearly  all  parts 
of  Ireland  and  before  vast  masses  of  ignorant  and  ex- 
cited men,  used  language  of  the  most  inflammatory 
character  about  England,  constantly  dilating  upon  the 
treachery,  the  oppression,  the  barbarity  of  her  past, 
and  constantly  representing  her  as  the  tyrant  and  the 
arch-enemy  of  Ireland.  Even  in  exhorting  the  people 
to  abstain  from  crime,  it  was  on  the  ground  that  it 
would  give  strength  to  the  'enemy,'  and  the  enemy 
were  the  English,  or,  as  he  usually  termed  them,  the 
'  Saxons.'  That  his  language  was  calculated  in  the 
highest  degree  to  separate  the  two  nations  and  to  kindle 
or  strengthen  anti-English  feeling  cannot  reasonably 
be  questioned,  though  this  language  was  cou23led  with 
expressions  of  enthusiastic  devotion  to  the  Queen,  whom 
he  always  termed  the  Queen  of  Ireland,  and  with  a  con- 


O'CONNELL'S  TRIAL  267 

stant  assertion  that  he  had  no  desire  to  sever  the  con- 
nection. 

The  avowed  object  of  the  meetings  was  to  protest 
against  the  Union  and  to  petition  for  its  repeal,  and  it 
was  acknowledged  by  the  Crown  lawyers  that  this  ob- 
ject was  not  in  itself  illegal.  They  were  obliged  also 
to  acknowledge  that  O'Connell  was  indefatigable  in  his 
exhortations  to  the  people  to  keep  strictly  within  the 
law,  to  abstain  from  all  drunkenness,  violence,  and  dis- 
order, to  injure  nobody,  to  intimidate  nobody.  Never, 
perhaps,  in  any  country  had  so  long  a  series  of  such 
gigantic  popular  out-of-door  meetings  been  held  with 
such  a  total  absence  of  disturbance,  and  no  evidence 
was  adduced  at  the  trial  to  show  that  they  were  accom- 
panied by  any  of  that  intimidation  or  boycotting  of 
minorities  which  characterises  more  modern  movements 
in  Ireland.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  contended  by 
the  prosecution  that  a  meeting  which  in  itself  was  per- 
fectly legal  may  become  illegal  if  it  is  made  use  of  for 
the  purpose  of  exciting  hatred  and  contempt  of  the 
Government  and  the  Constitution,  or  if  it  forms  part 
of  a  combination  for  the  purpose  of  intimidating  and 
overcoming  the  legislature  by  vast  demonstrations  of 
physical  force,  and  thus  procuring  changes  in  law  and 
government.  That  this  was  the  object  of  O'Connell 
could  hardly  be  denied.  These  vast  organised  demon- 
Btrations  were  not  merely  demonstrations  of  public 
opinion.  They  were,  and  they  were  intended  to  be, 
demonstrations  of  physical  force  on  a  gigantic  scale, 
and  in  speech  after  speech  O'Connell  had  dilated  upon 
the  facility  with  which  the  multitudes  before  him  could 
be  converted  into  armies  of  overwhelming  strength. 
He  was  pursuing,  it  was  said,  a  legal  end  by  illegal 
means,  and  by  raising  the  fiercest  passions  against  Eng- 
land and  organising  millions  of  men  into  great  political 


268      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

bodies  he  sought  to  force  through  a  measure  which 
Parliament  and  the  electors  had  repudiated.  And  he 
pretended  that  it  was  possible  to  effect  this  without  any 
appeal  to  the  legislature  in  London. 

He  was  accused  also  of  an  organised  attempt  to 
bring  the  law  courts  and  the  administration  of  justice 
into  contempt  and  disrepute  by  inducing  the  people  to 
withdraw  the  adjudication  of  their  disputes  from  the 
established  tribunals  and  to  place  them  in  the  hands  of 
courts  of  his  own  creation.  It  could  not  reasonably  be 
contended  that  it  was  illegal  for  O'Connell  to  exhort 
his  people  to  follow  the  examples  of  the  Quakers  and 
abstain  from  the  law  courts;  it  was  difficult  to  contend 
that  the  establishment  of  voluntary  arbitration  courts, 
with  no  legal  sanction,  for  the  purpose  of  settling  dis- 
putes was  in  itself  illegal,  and  the  extent  to  which  this 
system  was  carried  out  throughout  Ireland  is  a  wonder- 
ful example  of  his  power.  But  this  was  done,  in  his 
own  words,  with  the  object  of  '  taking  all  power  out  of 
the  hands  of  the  Government,  as  regarded  the  courts 
of  law.'  To  institute  and  appoint  in  the  several  dis- 
tricts of  Ireland  new  courts  for  the  express  purpose  of 
superseding  the  ordinary  tribunals,  and  to  place  osten- 
tatiously at  the  head  of  many  of  them  former  magis- 
trates who  had  just  been  removed  by  the  Crown  from 
the  commission  of  the  peace  was,  it  was  said,  an  usur- 
pation of  the  royal  prerogative  and  constituted  a  crim- 
inal offence. 

Into  the  legal  questions  involved  in  these  charges 
it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  enter,  nor  yet  into  the 
propriety  of  making  O'Connell  and  several  other  men, 
including  a  number  of  newspaper  writers,  jointly  re- 
sponsible for  deeds  and  words  most  of  which  certainly 
did  not  spring  from  common  consultation.  The  many 
issues  that  were  brought  before  the  jury,  though  vary- 


O'CONNELL'S  TRIAL  269 

ing  slightly  in  their  phraseology  to  meet  legal  difficul- 
ties, may  all  be  substantially  reduced  to  the  points  I 
have  mentioned,  and  the  true  question  in  judging  the 
trial  is  whether  these  things  constituted  legal  offences. 
The  verdict  of  the  Irish  Court  was  overthrown  on  ap- 
peal by  the  House  of  Lords,  but  it  cannot  be  said  that 
the  decision  carried  with  it  great  weight.  The  English 
judges  were  consulted  on  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
trial,  and  the  majority,  while  admitting  that  there  had 
been  several  irregularities  in  it,  upheld  the  verdict  of 
the  Irish  Court.  Of  the  law  lords  who  finally  decided 
the  case,  the  three  who  were  political  opponents  of  the 
Government  voted  one  way,  while  Brougham,  who  was 
now  bitterly  exasperated  with  the  Whigs,  and  Lynd- 
hurst,  who  was  one  of  the  great  leaders  of  the  Tories, 
voted  the  other,  and  the  appeal  was  ultimately  decided 
not  on  the  broad  merits  of  the  case,  but  on  legal  grounds 
of  the  most  technical  kind. 

The  verdict  against  O'Connell  in  the  Irish  trial  was 
given  on  February  12,  1844;  but,  as  the  sentence  was 
deferred  till  the  next  term,  O'Connell  remained  at  large 
upon  bail  for  some  months.  He  went  to  London,  ap- 
peared in  Parliament,  and  took  part  in  a  long  debate 
on  the  state  of  Ireland.  Grenville  mentions  that  'he 
spoke  well,  temperately,  becomingly,  was  well  received, 
and  made  a  favourable  impression.'  There  was  evi- 
dently a  strong  party  in  England  in  his  favour,  and  a 
very  decided  feeling  that  his  trial  had  been  an  unfair 
one.  The  manner  in  which  the  jury  panel  had  been 
tampered  with;  the  exclusion  of  all  Catholics  from  the 
jury  box;  the  extreme  complexity  and,  at  the  same 
time,  the  dangerous  vagueness  and  comprehensiveness 
of  the  indictment,  and  the  manifest  partisanship  of  the 
presiding  judge,  were  all  topics  brought  forward  in 
Parliament  by  the  Whig  Opposition.     Lord  John  Rus- 


270      LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

sell,  who  led  the  Whig  party,  and  Sir  Thomas  Wilde, 
who  held  a  first  place  among  the  Whig  lawyers  in  Par- 
liament, strongly  condemned  the  trial.  O'Connell  was 
received  with  enthusiastic  applause  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Anti-Corn  Law  League  in  Covent  Garden.  He  at- 
tended great  Eadical  meetings  at  Birmingham,  Man- 
chester, Liverpool,  and  Coventry,  and  a  public  dinner 
was  given  to  him  in  Covent  Garden  Theatre. 

On  May  30  the  deferred  sentence  was  pronounced, 
and  O'Connell  was  condemned  to  a  year's  imprison- 
ment and  a  fine  of  2,000/.,  and  was  required  to  give 
security  to  the  amount  of  6,0001.  for  his  good  behaviour 
for  seven  years.  Preparations  were  at  once  made  for 
an  appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords. 

His  greatest  anxiety  at  this  time  was  that  no  breach 
of  the  peace  should  take  place.  Immediately  after  the 
verdict  had  been  given  he  proposed,  to  the  great  indig- 
nation of  the  Young  Ireland  party,  that  the  Eepeal 
Association  should  be  dissolved  and  reconstructed  on  a 
new  basis,  excluding  all  proprietors  of  newspapers,  so 
that  the  leaders  of  the  new  body  could  never  again  be 
made  responsible  for  press  writings  over  which  they  had 
no  real  control.  In  consequence  of  the  opposition  he 
met  with,  O'Connell  abandoned  his  proposal  for  dis- 
solving the  association,  and  also  a  proposal  for  giving 
up  the  arbitration  courts.  These  courts,  however, 
were  now  formally  separated  from  the  Eepeal  Associa- 
tion. The  newspaper  editors  resigned  their  member- 
ship, and  the  military  cards,  which  had  given  so  much 
oSence,  were  abandoned.  O'Connell  issued  a  mani- 
festo, urging  the  people  not  to  assemble  in  crowds  or 
processions  at  the  time  of  his  sentence,  and  wrote 
urgently  to  the  Catholic  bishops,  begging  them  in  each 
diocese  to  take  the  strongest  measures  to  keep  the 
peace. 


O'CONNELL  IN  PRISON  271 

These  efforts  were  successful,  and  no  disturbance 
whatever  followed  his  arrest,  though  there  was  abun- 
dant evidence  of  the  genuine  and  increasing  enthusiasm 
with  which  O'Connell  was  sustained.  The  repeal  rent 
in  the  fourteen  weeks  preceding  his  imprisonment  had 
amounted  to  6,679/.  12s.  6d.  In  the  fourteen  weeks 
after  O'Connell  was  in  gaol  it  rose  to  25,712?.  17s. 
2d.^  Several  important  persons — among  others  Smith 
O'Brien — who  had  hitherto  held  aloof  from  the  Eepeal 
Association  now  formally  joined  it,  and  deputations, 
headed  by  the  mayors,  flowed  into  Dublin  from  most 
of  the  Irish  towns.  Gifts  of  all  kinds  poured  in,  and 
in  nearly  all  the  Catholic  churches  throughout  Ireland 
prayers  were  offered  up  for  the  '  Liberator. '  Among 
the  addresses  which  he  received  was  one  which  must 
have  been  peculiarly  gratifying  to  him  from  the  Eng- 
lish Catholics,  and  signed  by  nearly  all  the  peers,  headed 
by  his  old  adversary.  Lord  Shrewsbury.  It  declared 
that  his  whole  life  had  been  spent  in  the  cause  of  his 
country  and  the  advancement  of  civil  and  religious  lib- 
erty, and  it  congratulated  him  that  in  the  time  of  his 
imprisonment  his  '  precepts  of  order  and  peace  were 
scrupulously  attended  to.' ' 

His  imprisonment  in  Eichmond  gaol  pending  the 
appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords  was  of  the  lightest  kind. 
The  prisoners  were  allowed  to  live  together,  to  see,  with 
scarcely  a  limitation,  their  relatives  and  friends,  and 
for  a  time  even  to  receive  deputations.  They  were 
given  full  liberty  to  pursue  their  literary  and  journal- 
istic work.  The  houses  of  the  governor  and  deputy- 
governor  were  placed  at  their  disposal.  They  were 
treated  more  like  honoured  guests  than  prisoners. 
They  gave  almost  daily  dinner  parties,  and  the  Catho- 

*  O'Neill  Daunt,  Ireland  and  her  Agitators,  p.  212. 
'  Cusack's  Life  of  O^Connell,  p.  731. 


273      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

lie  bishops  vied  with  each  other  for  the  honour  of  cele- 
brating the  daily  mass.  On  September  24  the  appeal 
to  the  House  of  Lords  was  heard. 

On  occasions  of  this  kind,  when  the  House  sits  to 
review  the  decisions  of  the  law  courts,  it  is  customary 
to  leave  the  matter  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  law 
lords,  and  the  permanent  maintenance  of  tli3  judicial 
authority  of  the  House  obviously  depends  upon  the  ob- 
servance of  this  custom;  but  there  have  been  instances 
in  which  lay  lords  have  taken  part  in  the  decision/ 
O'Connell  had  always  been  the  bitter  enemy  of  the 
House  of  Lords.  He  had  inveighed  against  it  in  the 
grossest  terms,  and  had  given  some  of  its  members 
cause  for  the  deepest  personal  animosity.  When  the 
appeal  was  to  be  heard,  a  number  of  lay  lords  came 
down  to  the  House  to  vote  against  him.  The  five  law 
lords,  who  were  present,  first  delivered  their  opinions 
— Lyndhurst  and  Brougham  confirming  the  sentence 
of  the  Irish  Court,  Cottenham,  Campbell,  and  Denman 
condemning  it.  Lord  Denman,  in  the  course  of  his 
judgment,  stigmatised  the  proceedings  in  Ireland  in 
the  strongest  language.  When  the  law  lords  had  de- 
livered their  judgment,  Lord  Wharncliffe  rose  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  other  members  of  the  House  not  to  permit 
their  personal  or  political  feelings  to  influence  a  judicial 
sentence.  The  appeal  struck  the  right  chord.  The 
high  and  honourable  feeling  that  has  almost  always 
characterised  the  House  of  Lords  reasserted  its  sway. 
Every  lay  lord  left  the  House,  and  their  bitterest  living 
enemy  was  freed  by  their  forbearance. 

This  event  was  entirely  unexpected.     From  the  time 

when  the  English  judges  had  decided  by  a  majority  of 

seven  to  two  in  favour  of  the  Irish  verdict  the  prisoners 

had  given  up  all  hope  of  a  reversal.     O'Oonnell  in  sol- 

^  E.g.  in  the  famous  Douglas  case  in  1769. 


RELEASE  OF  O'CONNELL  273 

emn  tones  pronounced  it  to  be  an  answer  to  the  prayers 
in  the  Catholic  churches,  and  all  through  Ireland  the 
news  was  received  with  almost  a  delirium  of  enthusi- 
asm. A  triumphal  car,  driven  by  six  horses  and  escorted 
by  a  vast  multitude,  brought  O'Connell  from  the  prison 
to  his  house  in  Merrion  Square,  and  the  cheers  re- 
doubled as  they  passed  the  old  Parliament  house  of 
Ireland,  to  which  O'Connell  pointed  with  a  significant 
gesture.  Even  in  the  remotest  districts  of  Ireland  the 
blaze  of  countless  bonfires  attested  the  unbounded, 
unexampled  popularity  he  enjoyed. 

He  had,  of  course,  at  once  to  address  the  multitude 
and  afterwards  the  Repeal  Association,  and  he  did  so 
in  his  usual  strain  of  mob  oratory.  There  was  much 
abuse  of  Peel — censure  of  the  injustice  and  partisanship 
of  his  trial,  a  sarcastic  notice  of  that  '  indescribable 
wretch  Brougham,'  and  a  threat  that  he  would  do  his 
utmost  to  bring  about  the  impeachment  of  the  Irish 
judges  and  of  the  ministers.  It  was  remarked,  how- 
ever, by  close  observers  that  the  note  of  exultation  was 
very  chastened,  and  that  the  note  of  defiance  was 
scarcely  present.  There  was  no  programme  of  future 
agitation,  no  promise  of  a  revival  of  the  monster  meet- 
ings, and  the  passage  on  which  he  dwelt  the  most,  and 
to  which  he  evidently  attached  most  importance,  was 
an  earnest  and  solemn  denunciation  of  the  employment 
of  physical  force.  He  was,  he  said,  ^  the  first  apostle 
and  founder  of  that  sect  of  politicians  whose  cardinal 
doctrine  is  this:  that  the  greatest  and  most  desirable  of 
political  changes  may  be  achieved  by  moral  means 
alone,  and  that  no  human  revolution  is  worth  the  effu- 
sion of  one  single  drop  of  human  blood.  Human  blood 
is  no  cement  for  the  temple  of  human  liberty.'  ^ 

^  Compare  Gavan  Duffy's   Young  Ireland,  pp.  533-538,  and 
O'Neill  Daunt,  Ireland  and  her  Agitators,  p.  218. 

VOL.  u  18 


274       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


PART   III 

o'coknell's  last  days 

I^S"  the  eyes  of  the  unthinking  multitude,  O'Connell 
had  never  appeared  so  great,  so  triumphant,  so  emi- 
nently the  representative  of  Catholic  Ireland  as  at  this 
time,  but  in  truth  the  period  of  his  decadence  had  set 
in,  and  he  himself  was  not  unconscious  of  the  fact. 
As  soon  as  possible  after  his  release  from  prison  he 
escaped  from  his  admirers  to  the  Atlantic  air  and  his 
beloved  beagles  at  Darrynane,  and  it  sjieedily  became 
evident  to  his  intimate  friends  that  he  was  a  changed 
man.  The  gigantic  physical  as  well  as  mental  strain  of 
the  long  series  of  monster  meetings;  the  excitement  of 
the  protracted  trial;  the  anxiety  which  for  a  time 
deeply  preyed  upon  him  lest  the  people  during  his 
enforced  absence  should  burst  into  rebellion;  the  in- 
terruption of  his  usual  active  habits  during  more  than 
three  months'  imprisonment;  the  violent  alternations 
of  despondency  and  exultation  through  which  he  had 
lately  passed  were  too  much  for  a  man  who  was  now 
verging  on  seventy.  He  had  suddenly  aged.  His 
wonderful  voice,  overstrained  by  excessive  exertion, 
had  lost  its  old  power.  His  handwriting  had  grown 
tremulous.  His  step  was  feeble  and  uncertain.  He 
retained  his  old  clearness  of  judgment,  something  of 
his  old  ambition,  and  all  his  old  love  of  power;  but 
his  nerve  was  shaken,  his  energy  was  abated.  The 
consciousness  of  failure  was  upon  him.  He  had  seldom 
been  averse  to  compromise,  and  while  a  more  ardent 


FEDERALISM  275 

and  violent  spirit  was  rising  among  the  younger  and 
most  brilliant  of  his  disciples,  his  own  disposition  was 
growing  more  pacific. 

A  scheme  known  as  Federalism  was,  in  1844,  oc- 
cupying a  great  deal  of  attention  in  Irish  circles.  The 
impossibilities  of  Grattan's  Constitution  in  a  democratic 
state  had  come  home  to  many  minds,  and  a  scheme  for 
retaining  the  Irish  representation  for  Imperial  purposes 
in  the  Imperial  Parliament,  and  at  the  same  time  estab- 
lishing a  subordinate  and  restricted  Parliament  in 
Ireland  for  exclusively  Irish  purposes,  found  several 
advocates  in  very  different  camps.  Maunsell,  who  was 
perhaps  the  ablest  Tory  journalist  in  Ireland,  had 
started  the  notion  that  some  compromise  with  the  re- 
pealers might  be  effected,  and  he  proposed  in  the  Dub- 
lin Corporation  that  an  address  should  be  presented  to 
the  Queen  praying  her  to  hold  her  Court  and  Parlia- 
ment in  Dublin  once  in  every  three  years.  The  scheme 
though  much  discussed  was  not  widely  accepted,  but 
the  desire  for  compromise  which  it  evinced  was  mani- 
festly spreading.  It  was  contended  that  though  a 
Grattan  Parliament  was  an  impossibility,  a  local  and 
subordinate  Parliament  might  be  made  to  work,  and 
the  Federal  idea  was  espoused  among  others  by  Shar- 
man  Crawford,  one  of  the  most  respected  Irish  mem- 
bers of  Parliament;  by  Porter,  a  very  important  and 
representative  gentleman  in  the  North  of  Ireland,'  who 
wrote  a  pamphlet  on  the  subject;  by  Davis,  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  writers  in  the  'Nation;'  by  Thomas 
O'Hagan,  who  became  in  after  years  Lord  Chancellor 
of  Ireland ;  and  by  at  least  one  of  the  Catholic  bishops. 
It  was  especially  popular  among  the  Protestant  re- 
pealers, and  in  1843  0' Council  had  insisted  that  Feder- 


*  See  Croker  Papers,  ill.  21. 


276       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

alists  should  be  admitted  into  the  Kepeal  Association. 
Partly  through  a  desire  to  conciliate  the  Protestants 
and  widen  the  basis  of  the  repeal  movement;  partly 
through  a  belief  that  if  a  local  Parliament  were  once 
conceded  it  would  become  a  powerful  agent  in  securing 
complete  legislative  independence;  and  partly  also 
through  a  notion  that  the  English  Whigs  would  not  be 
wholly  adverse  to  a  local  and  restricted  Parliament,  his 
own  judgment  began  to  incline  towards  Federalism. 

There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  a  plan  of  this 
kind  had  long  floated  in  his  mind.  Lord  Campbell 
mentions  that  as  early  as  1833  O'Connell  acknowledged 
to  him  in  a  private  conversation  that  he  was  working 
on  the  idea  of  a  subordinate  Parliament  like  that  of 
Jamaica;  but  Campbell  added  that  if  such  a  Parliament 
were  conceded  to  Ireland  he  had  no  doubt  that  O'Con- 
nell would  at  once  declare  it  independent  and  supreme.^ 
In  the  repeal  debate  in  the  Dublin  Corporation  in  1843, 
there  was  a  remarkable  passage  in  which  he  dilated 
upon  the  benefits  which  had  been  attained  by  the  de- 
pendent Parliament  of  Canada,  and  declared  his  readi- 
ness, under  certain  circumstances,  to  accept  a  depend- 
ent Parliament.  '  I  know,'  he  said,  '  what  relief  it  will 
give  to  quiet  men  of  every  party.  ...  I  never  said  it 
before,  but  I  am  always  for  taking  an  instalment  when 
I  cannot  get  the  whole,  and  I  will  take  that.  If  it 
should  work  well  for  the  country  I  will  ask  no  more ; 
but  if  it  should  work  ill  I  cannot  bind  my  countrymen 
or  prevent  them  from  seeking  for  more.  I  would 
never,  however,  consent  to  a  foreign  legal  appeal  or  in 
the  judicial  authority  not  being  final;  that  is  a  princi- 
ple I  would  hold  inviolate,  but  a  Parliament  inferior 
to  the  English  Parliament  I  would  accept  as  an  instal- 


*  Life  of  Lord  Campbell,  ii.  34. 


O'CONNELL  ADOPTS  FEDERALISM  277 

ment,  if  I  found  the  people  ready  to  go  with  me,  and 
if  it  were  offered  me  by  competent  authority.  It  must 
first  be  offered  me — mark  that — I  will  never  seek  it. 
By  this  declaration  I  am  bound  thus  far,  that  if  the 
period  should  come  when  I  am  called  upon  practically 
to  act  upon  it,  I  will  do  so;  but  I  will  not  give  up  my 
exertions  for  the  independent  legislation  until  from 
some  substantial  quarter  that  offer  is  made.  I  know  I 
may  risk  something  of  popularity  by  making  this  state- 
ment, but  the  citizens  of  Dublin  have  seen  already  that 
I  can  encounter  unpopularity,  aye,  and  personal  danger 
without  apprehension  when  I  think  myself  right  in 
principle.  Upon  this  subject  I  must  not  be  mistaken. 
I  never  will  ask  for  or  look  for  any  other  save  an  inde- 
pendent legislature,  but  if  others  offer  me  a  subordinate 
Parliament  I  will  close  with  any  such  authorised  offer 
and  accept  that  offer.'  ^ 

In  October  1844,  however,  O'Connell  went  much 
further  than  this,  and  startled  and  divided  the  repeal 
party  by  a  letter  in  which  he  expressed,  though  with 
some  ambiguities  and  qualifications  of  language,  his 
opinion  that  the  Federation  system  was  preferable  to 
the  simple  repeal  for  which  he  had  hitherto  contended. 
It  would,  he  said,  '  tend  more  to  the  utility  of  Ireland 
and  the  maintenance  of  the  connection  with  England 
than  the  proposal  of  simple  repeal.' 

This  letter  produced  much  consternation  in  the  re- 
peal camp.  In  the  preceding  year  O'Connell  had  for- 
mally pledged  himself  that  twelve  months  would  not 
elapse  before  an  independent  Irish  Parliament  was  sit- 
ting in  College  Green,  and  at  the  time  when  he  entered 
into  Eichmond  gaol  he  had  predicted  that  repeal  would 
come  in  six  months  if  the  people  would  remain  peace- 


*  Repeal  Discussion,  p.  191-193. 


278      LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

f  ul.  He  now  was  avowedly  abandoning  the  active  re- 
peal movement,  and  doing  so  because  he  preferred  a 
scheme  which  was  essentially  different  from  that  to 
which  he  had  devoted  so  many  years  of  his  agitation. 
Some  of  his  most  devoted  followers,  including  O'Neill 
Daunt,  openly  denounced  Federalism.  The  '  Nation  ' 
turned  strenuously  against  it,  and  it  soon  became  mani- 
fest that  it  was  not  likely  to  bring  any  considerable 
Protestant  accession  to  the  repeal  ranks,  while  the  great 
Catholic  masses  took  no  interest  in  it,  and,  indeed, 
scarcely  understood  it.  O'Connell  was  profoundly  dis- 
appointed. He  wrote  from  Darrynane,  urging  that 
the  subject  should  not  be  mentioned  in  the  Repeal 
Association  till  he  arrived  in  Dublin,  and  when  he  did 
arrive  his  irritation  at  the  public  opposition  to  his 
scheme  was  very  manifest.  To  the  inquiry  of  O'Neill 
Daunt  after  his  health,  he  replied  that  he  was  as  well 
as  a  man  could  be  who  was  opposed  by  one-half  of  his 
friends  and  deserted  by  the  other  half;  but  he  saw 
clearly  that  his  only  course  was  to  retreat.  '  I  was 
deceived,'  he  said;  '  I  got  promises  that  we  should  have 
a  valuable  Whig  accession.'  As  was  usual  with  him, 
be  did  not  hesitate  long.  He  went  down  to  the  associ- 
ation and  openly  recanted  Federalism.  Snapping  his 
fingers,  he  exclaimed,  '  Federalism  is  not  worth  that  ! '  * 
This  ejoisode  threw  back  considerably  the  repeal  agi- 
tation, and  nothing  was  done  to  push  on  the  advantage 
which  the  legal  condemnation  of  the  trial  in  Dublin 
had  given  to  the  repealers.  The  idle,  foolish,  and 
probably  entirely  insincere  proposal  of  impeaching  the 
lawyers  and  ministers  connected  with  the  trial  was 
speedily  abandoned.     Peel,  in  the  meantime,  was  gov- 


^  Compare  O'Neill  Daunt,  Personal  Recollections,  ii.  214-232; 
Duffy's  Young  Ireland,  pp.  575-605. 


CONCILIATORY  MEASURES  OF  PEEL  279 

erning  the  country  firmly,  but  also  in  a  very  concilia- 
tory spirit.  His  private  letters  clearly  show  his  desire 
to  make  every  concession  to  the  Eoman  Catholics  that 
was  compatible  with  the  two  great  objects  of  maintain- 
ing the  Union  and  the  Established  Church.  Lord 
Heytesbury  came  over  as  Viceroy  in  the  place  of  Lord 
de  Grey,  and  he  had  instructions  to  do  as  much  as  he 
could  to  favour  Eoman  Catholics  in  matters  of  patron- 
age, and  especially  to  give  them  increased  confidence 
in  the  administration  of  justice  by  placing  Catholics  on 
the  Bench  and  in  other  posts  of  dignity  and  power.  A 
commission  with  large  powers,  presided  over  by  Lord 
Devon,  was  established  for  the  purpose  of  making  a 
full  and  exhaustive  inquiry  into  the  condition  of  the 
Irish  people  who  were  engaged  in  agriculture,  into  the 
relations  of  landlord  and  tenant,  and  all  the  other 
agrarian  questions  which  lay  at  the  root  of  the  poverty 
of  the  people.  Great  and  not  wholly  unsuccessful 
efforts  were  made  to  conciliate  the  more  moderate  sec- 
tion of  the  priesthood.  A  '  Charitable  Trust  Act '  giv- 
ing increased  protection  to  bequests  for  Catholic  pur- 
poses was  introduced  and  carried,  and  in  spite  of  the 
strenuous  opposition  of  O'Connell  and  of  Archbishop 
MacHale,  three  members  of  the  Catholic  episcopacy 
consented  to  serve  on  the  board.  Archbishop  Murray, 
by  appearing  at  the  levee  of  Lord  Heytesbury,  marked 
his  dissent  from  the  violent  enmity  to  the  Peel  Admin- 
istration which  O'Connell  preached,  and  as  a  result  of 
some  informal  negotiations  at  Rome  a  rescript  was  sent 
from  the  Vatican  cautioning  the  priests  against  taking 
any  prominent  part  in  Irish  politics. 

Two  measures  of  great  importance  speedily  followed. 
The  College  of  Maynooth,  which  had  been  set  up  by 
the  Irish  Parliament  in  1795  for  the  education  of  the 
priesthood,  had  hitherto  only  a  very  inadequate  endow- 


^80      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

ment  varying  from  about  8,000?.  to  9,000?.,  which  was 
voted  annually  and  constantly  opposed.  Peel  deter- 
mined largely  to  increase  it  and  to  place  it  on  a  per- 
manent basis.  No  small  courage  was  needed  to  carry 
out  such  a  policy,  for  it  was  certain  to  encounter  pas- 
sionate and  persistent  opposition  from  the  extreme 
Protestant  party,  both  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
It  was  denounced  from  many  pulpits  as  a  national  sin; 
it  was  certainly  unpopular  with  the  great  masses  both 
of  the  English  and  Scotch  people,  and  it  led  to  the 
secession  of  Gladstone  from  the  Cabinet.  In  spite, 
however,  of  all  obstacles  Peel  persevered.  The  endow- 
ment of  Maynooth  was  raised  to  26,000?.  a  year,  and 
an  additional  sum  of  30,000?.  was  granted  for  its  build- 
ings. The  whole  management  of  the  college  and  of  its 
endowments  was  left  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the 
Catholic  bishops,  and  Maynooth  has  gradually  become 
the  chief  seminary  for  the  education  of  the  priesthood, 
not  only  for  Ireland  but  for  the  colonies. 

Probably  few  persons  will  contend  that  it  has  suc- 
ceeded in  rendering  them  loyal  to  England  and  to  the 
Crown,  or  even  in  greatly  raising  their  level  of  culture 
and  intelligence,  but  the  measure  of  Peel  was  just, 
courageous,  and  generous,  and  it  reflects  high  honour 
on  his  administration.  0' Council  could  not  help  sup- 
porting it,  but  he  did  so  in  the  most  grudging  manner, 
attributing  it  wholly  to  the  pressure  produced  by  his 
agitation.*  His  detestation  of  Peel,  indeed,  never 
abated,  and  few  men  carried  into  party  warfare  a  more 
unscrupulous  spirit. 

The  other  great  measure  of  1845  was  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Queen's  colleges,  soon  followed  by  the 
Queen's  University,  to  which  they  were  affiliated.     It 


^  See  Walpole's  History  of  England,  iv.  251. 


THE  QUEEN'S  COLLEGES  281 

was  intended  to  secure  the  higher  education  of  all  de- 
nominations of  Irishmen  on  the  basis  of  complete 
equality.  Trinity  College  had  long  thrown  open  its 
degrees  to  Koman  Catholics,  but  its  fellowships  and 
scholarships  were  still  restricted  to  members  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  and  although  a  large 
number  of  Catholics  of  the  upper  classes  had  profited 
by  its  teaching,  it  had  hardly  touched  the  great  body 
of  the  Catholic  middle  classes.  By  planting  the  new 
colleges  in  Belfast,  Cork,  and  Galway,  Sir  Kobert  Peel 
appealed  at  once  to  the  Presbyterians  and  to  the  Catho- 
lics, and  his  measure  was  conceived  in  the  largest  and 
most  tolerant  spirit.  Ample  provision  was  made  for 
the  best  secular  education  that  could  be  afforded,  and 
although  it  was  determined  that  no  chairs  of  theology 
should  be  founded  or  endowed  by  the  Government, 
private  persons  were  not  only  permitted  but  invited  to 
establish  such  chairs  for  the  religious  instruction  of  the 
members  of  each  denomination  within  the  walls  of  the 
colleges,  and  by  chaplains  appointed  by  their  own  eccle- 
siastical authorities. 

It  was  proposed  that  denominational  residential 
halls  should  be  established  by  voluntary  subscription, 
in  which  the  Catholic  students  who  desired  it  might 
live  together  under  the  direct  supervision  of  their 
clergy;  Deans  of  Kesidence  were  to  be  appointed  by 
the  different  denominations;  Catholic  bishops  were 
offered  seats  in  the  Senate  and  on  the  Visitorial  Board ; 
every  professor  was  bound  by  a  solemn  engagement  to 
abstain  on  penalty  of  dismissal  from  interfering  in  any 
way  with  the  religious  opinions  of  his  pupils,  and  it 
was  provided  in  the  statutes  that  regulations  might  be 
made  for  the  attendance  of  the  students  at  such  divine 
worship  as  might  be  approved  of  by  their  parents  or 
guardians.     The  Government,  following  the  course  of 


282      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

nearly  all  modern  continental  States,  refused  to  place 
the  control  of  secular  education  in  ecclesiastical  hands, 
and  kept  the  appointment  and  dismissal  of  the  pro- 
fessors in  its  own  power;  but  it  consented  to  establish 
a  board  on  which  the  various  religions  were  represented, 
and  on  which  Archbishop  Murray  was  invited  to  sit,  for 
the  purpose  of  selecting  and  recommending  them.  A 
Catholic  priest  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  college  of 
Galway,  and  a  very  eminent  Catholic  layman  at  the 
head  of  that  of  Cork.  In  the  words  of  Sir  R.  Peel: 
*  The  principle  of  equality  is  preserved  in  the  new  insti- 
tutions. We  have  given  the  Catholics  every  facility 
for  religious  instruction.  We  have  given  them  direct 
sanction  and  encouragement.  We  have  admitted  that 
secular  instruction  will  be  imperfect  unless  accompanied 
by  religious  instruction  as  its  basis ;  but  we  have  thought 
(it  may  be  erroneously)  that  the  best  way  of  providing 
that  religious  instruction  where  there  is  so  much  jeal- 
ousy of  interference  was  to  give  every  facility,  but  to 
call  on  parents  ....  to  provide  the  means  and  to  call 
OQ  the  respective  Churches  to  give  their  aid  in  provid- 
ing that  education.' 

Few  greater  boons  have  ever  been  granted  to  the 
Irish  people,  and,  judged  by  all  the  tests  that  would  be 
accepted  on  the  Continent,  it  provided  the  most  ample 
guarantees  for  their  religious  faith.  It  was  intended 
to  do  for  the  upper  and  middle  classes  of  Catholics 
what  the  national  education  had  done  for  the  poor.  A 
large  number  of  the  Irish  Catholics  recognised  in  it  the 
fulfilment  of  a  great  national  want,  and  urged  their 
people  to  accept  it.  Sir  T.  Wyse  had  much  to  say  in 
suggesting   the   scheme.*      The   chief   writers   in   the 

*  See  a  valuable  pamphlet  Half  of  the  19th  Century  "  from 
called  "  Notes  on  Educational  the  Memoirs  of  Sir  Thomas 
Reform  in  Ireland  in  the  First       Wyse,  by  his  Niece  (1901). 


DENUNCIATION  OF  THE  QUEEN'S  COLLEGES     283 

'  Nation '  supported  it,  and  several  of  the  more  moder- 
ate Irish  Catholic  bishops,  including  Murray,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Dublin,  and  Crolly,  the  Archbishop  of 
Armagh,  were  prepared  to  accept  it  and  to  do  their 
best  to  carry  it  into  effect.'  Unfortunately  it  had  to 
encounter  from  different  quarters  the  combined  force 
of  intense  bigotry  and  unscrupulous  party  spirit.  A 
section  of  the  English  Conservatives  still  held  that  all 
State-endowed  education  must  be  religious  and  in  the 
hands  of  the  Established  Church,  and  they  denounced 
the  new  colleges  as  '  godless  education.' 

The  phrase  was  that  of  Sir  Robert  Inglis,  but  it  was 
at  once  taken  up  by  O'Connell  and  echoed  by  a  multi- 
tude of  Catholic  leaders.  Archbishop  MacHale,  who 
had  done  his  best  to  strangle  the  national  education 
for  the  poor,  was  foremost  in  his  denunciation.  The 
majority  of  the  bishops,  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  false 
mother  in  Solomon's  judgment,  were  determined  that 
no  system  of  higher  education  should  flourish  in  Ireland 
"unless  it  was  entirely  in  their  hands,  and  they  asserted 
their  right  of  appointing  and  dismissing  the  professors 
in  all  branches  of  secular  learning.  They  declared  that 
Roman  Catholic  pupils  could  not  attend  the  lectures  on 
history,  logic,  metaphysics,  moral  philosophy,  geology, 
or  anatomy  without  exposing  their  faith  and  morals  to 
imminent  danger,  unless  a  Roman  Catholic  professor 
was  appointed  to  each  of  those  chairs.  Archbishop 
MacHale  described  the  foundation  of  the  new  colleges 
as  '  a  penal  and  revolting  measure,'  an  attempt  '  to 
bribe  Catholic  youths  into  an  abandonment  of  their 
religion  ....  seconding  the  scheme  of  mercenary 
infidels.'  Dr.  Derry,  Bishop  of  Clonfert,  refused  the 
Sacrament  to  parents  who  sent  their  sons  to  them,  pro- 

*  Cardinal  Wiseman  also  approved  of  it.    Fitzpatrick,  ii.  360. 


284      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

nouncing  their  establishment  to  be  a  '  conspiracy  that 
has  been  organised  to  withdraw  the  education  of  youths 
from  the  influence  of  the  Catholic  Church/  a  '  Satanic 
scheme  for  the  ruin  of  faith  in  tlie  rising  generation.' 
O'Connell's  son,  doubtless  with  his  father's  approbation, 
spoke  of  it,  at  its  very  starting,  as  *  an  abominable  at- 
tempt to  undermine  religion  and  morality  in  Ireland.' 
0' Connell  himself  urged  the  bishops  to  give  no  encour- 
agement to  the  building  of  denominational  halls  for 
the  residence  of  Catholics,  on  the  ground  that  the 
Protestants  were  richer  than  the  Catholics,  and  would 
accordingly  build  more  halls,  and  to  accept  no  scheme 
without  a  provision  giving  them  a  decisive  voice  in  the 
appointment  and  dismissal  of  professors/ 

The  later  history  of  the  antagonism  of  the  Church 
to  the  colleges  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this 
work,  for  0' Connell  was  in  his  grave  before  it  came  to 
its  culmination.  Ultramontane  influences  were  acquir- 
ing at  Kome  an  ever-increasing  strength  and  aggressive- 
ness, and  Archbishop  MacHale  himself  went  over  to 
Eome  to  procure  a  condemnation  of  the  colleges.  His 
policy  triumphed.  In  1847  and  1848  rescripts  came 
over  from  Eome  describing  them  as  involving  *  a  grave 
danger  to  the  faith  of  Catholics,'  as  '  dangerous  to  faith 
and  morals,'  and  urging  the  bishops  to  erect  a  Catholic 
university  of  their  own  '  on  the  model  of  that  which 
has  been  founded  in  Louvain  by  the  prelates  of  Bel- 
gium.' The  death  of  Archbishop  Crolly,  and  soon 
after  of  Archbishop  Murray;  the  appointment  to  the 
Primacy  of  Ireland  of  Cardinal  Cullen,  who  represented 

*  A  great  deal  of  information  Appendix  to  the  Second  Report. 

on  the  early  history  of  Queen's  See,  too,  Cairne's  Political  Es- 

colleges  will  be  found  in  the  says,   pp.   256-322.      Bourke's 

evidence  of  Dr.  Starkie  before  Life  and  Times  of  Archbishop 

the  Commission  of  L"^niversity  3IacEale.  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  357- 

Education  in  Ireland  (1902),  359. 


IRISH   UNIVERSITY  EDUCATION  285 

the  most  extreme  type  of  an  Ultramontane  priest;  and 
finally  the  violent  antagonisms  produced  by  the  papal 
aggression  on  the  one  hand,  and  by  the  Durham  letter 
of  Lord  J.  Eussell  on  the  other,  assisted  the  obscurant- 
ist crusade.  In  1850  the  Synod  of  Thurles  condemned 
the  colleges,  and  in  1851  they  were  again  solemnly  con- 
demned from  Eome.  All  Catholics  were  warned 
against  them,  and  Catholic  priests  were  prohibited, 
under  canonical  censure,  from  taking  any  part  in  their 
administration. 

The  college  founded  by  Sir  Eobert  Peel  at  Belfast, 
being  attended  chiefly  by  Presbyterians,  has  proved  a 
great  success,  and  the  two  Catholic  colleges  of  Cork 
and  Gal  way  have,  in  the  course  of  half  a  century,  given 
an  excellent  education  to  a  large  number  of  Catholics, 
and  so  far  as  their  influence  has  extended  it  has  been 
wholly  for  good.  Educated  Catholic  opinion  in  Ireland 
has  been  at  least  sufficiently  powerful  to  prevent  the 
Church  from  absolutely  prohibiting  their  people  from 
attending  these  colleges,  though  they  can  attend  them 
only  in  spite  of  its  discouragement  and  warnings,  and 
though  the  machinery  which  Peel  had  designed  for 
securing  their  religious  instruction  has  been  paralysed 
by  the  refusal  of  the  priests  to  take  part  in  it.  But, 
on  the  whole,  the  colleges  of  Cork  and  Galway,  which 
ought  to  have  been  great  centres  of  Catholic  enlighten- 
ment, have  failed  to  fulfil  their  promise.  Education, 
and  especially  that  united  education  which  best  assuages 
the  animosities  of  race,  class  and  religions,  is  of  all  things 
what  is  most  needed  in  Ireland,  but  it  has  had  to  com- 
bat the  influence  of  a  i^riesthood  who  care  far  more  for 
influence  than  for  education,  and  who  especially  seek 
to  separate  their  own  people  from  Protestants. 

More  than  half  a  century  after  the  establishment  of 
the  Queen's  University,  and  thirty  years  after  the  abo- 


286      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

lition  of  every  vestige  of  religious  disqualification  in 
Trinity  College,  university  education  among  the  Irish 
Catholics  remains  deplorably  backward.  Statesmen  of 
the  most  opposite  views  have  stated  as  among  the  chief 
practical  difficulties  of  Irish  government  the  difficulty 
of  finding  competent  Catholics  to  fill  the  more  impor- 
tant posts;  the  certainty  that  if  these  appointments 
were  made  by  merit  alone,  the  great  majority  would  be 
given  to  the  Protestant  minority;  the  constant  neces- 
sity of  sacrificing  competence  and  efficiency  for  the 
purpose  of  preserving  a  balance  of  creeds.  That  great 
and  salutary  movement  which  all  over  the  civilised  world 
has  withdrawn  the  secular  education  of  State-endowed 
universities  from  ecclesiastical  control  has  found  little 
or  no  sympathy  in  Catholic  Ireland,  which  remains  be- 
yond all  other  countries  in  this  respect  priest-ridden. 

O'Connell  is  largely  responsible  for  this,  and  in  this 
respect  it  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  evil  he  has  done. 
Party  spirit  which  led  him  to  depreciate  or  resist  every 
measure  which  emanated  from  Sir  R.  Peel,  no  doubt 
played  some  part  in  his  opposition,  but  it  W'Ould  not,  I 
think,  be  just  to  attribute  it  wholly  or  even  mainly  to 
this.  All  through  his  life  he  consistently  held  the 
opinion,  which  was  shared  also  by  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  Protestant  world,  that  education  in  all  its  parts 
should  be  wholly  under  Ecclesiastical  influence.  The 
education  of  Catholics  he  maintained  should  be  exclu- 
sively committed  to  Catholic  authority.  On  one  con- 
dition, but  on  one  only,  did  he  see  no  objection  to 
Protestants  being  admitted  to  the  classes — that  all  the 
professors  were  nominated  by  the  canonical  authorities 
of  the  Catholic  Church.^     He  said  that  he  asked  noth- 


'See  an  interesting  letter  0'Co7ineU,  p.  742.  See,  too, 
written  to  Archbishop  Mac-  her  Speeches  and  Letters  of 
Hale    in    Cusack's    Life  of       O'Connell,  ii.  290. 


THE  YOUNG  IRELAND  PARTY        287 

ing  for  his  people  which  he  was  not  prepared  to  give 
tc  others,  and  that  he  would  support  a  purely  Presby- 
terian college  in  Belfast  provided  the  Catholic  priest- 
hood were  given  a  dominating  influence  in  the  appoint- 
ment and  dismissal  of  the  professors  of  the  Catholic 
colleges.  His  feeling  on  this  subject  strengthened  in 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  when  ill-health  began  visibly 
tc  weaken  his  powers.  With  a  devout  Catholic  strong 
religious  feeling  nearly  always  leads  to  complete  subser- 
vience to  clerical  influence,  and  Smith  O'Brien,  who 
was  at  this  time  in  close  and  confidential  relations  with 
O'Connell,  has  observed  how  in  the  two  or  three  last 
years  of  his  life  religious  considerations  had  come  to 
predominate  completely  in  his  mind.  '  I  have  more 
than  once,'  he  writes,  *  heard  him  express  a  desire  to 
enter  into  some  religious  establishment,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that  he  would  have  done  so  if  he  could  have 
extricated  himself  from  the  exigencies  of  his  position 
as  a  political  leader.'  ^ 

For  the  rest,  the  short  remainder  of  O'Connell's 
life  presents  little  that  is  remarkable,  and  the  most 
prominent  feature  is  his  quarrel  with  the  Young  Ire- 
land party  and  with  their  organ,  the  *  Nation.'  The 
story  has  been  told  with  great  fulness  and  knowledge 
by  Sir  Gavan  DuSy,  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
members,  as  well  as  one  of  the  last  survivors  of  the 
Young  Ireland  party.  It  is  very  much  the  old  familiar 
tale  of  a  great  leader  who  finds  in  the  decline  of  life  a 
younger  generation  of  his  disciples  breaking  away  from 
his  influence,  developing  lines  of  thought  and  policy 
with  which  he  is  unable  to  sympathise;  claiming  for 
themselves  a  share  of  power  which  he  does  not  readily 
concede. 

*  Letter  to  O'Neill  Daunt,  O'Neill  DaunVs  Life,  edited  by  his 
daughter,  p.  65. 


288      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

The  group  of  young  men  who,  under  the  editorship 
of  Gavan  Duffy,  conducted  the  'Nation/  were  men 
who  in  any  country  and  in  any  time  would  have  made 
their  mark,  though  none  of  them  had  that  rare  com- 
bination of  gifts  which  makes  O'Connell  an  almost 
unique  figure  in  history.  They  had  not  hib  command- 
ing and  many-sided  power,  his  wonderful  magnetic 
influence  over  the  great  masses  of  his  countrymen,  his 
infinite  variety  of  resource,  his  strange  union  of  the 
coarser  qualities  of  a  successful  demagogue  with  the 
acuteness  of  a  consummate  lawyer,  and  with  a  foresight, 
a  spirit  of  compromise  and  a  practical  genius  that  might 
have  given  him  a  high  place  among  statesmen. 

The  Young  Ireland  party,  however,  raised  Irish 
journalism  to  a  level  of  ability  which  it  had  never  be- 
fore approached,  and  it  is  but  just  to  them  to  say  that 
the  great  majority  were  men  of  pure  motives  and  ardent 
and  self-sacrificing  patriotism,  and  that  they  steadily 
preached  the  gospel  of  self-reliance,  industry,  earnest- 
ness, truthfulness,  and  independence  of  judgment  in  a 
country  in  which  these  things  were  pre-eminently  want- 
ing. They  were  in  a  high  degree  seditious.  They 
kindled  and  fostered  a  bitter  animosity  against  a  coun- 
try from  which  Ireland  can  never  be  dissevered,  and 
against  an  Empire  which  their  countrymen  had  done 
much  to  build,  and  in  which  they  must  always  find  the 
best  fields  for  their  ambition.  They  never  realised, 
what  Scotland  might  have  shown  them,  that  the  best 
elements  of  distinct  nationality  could  exist  and  flourish 
under  the  British  flag;  but  in  their  home  policy  they 
were  unflinching  advocates  of  tolerance,  and  it  was 
their  earnest  desire  to  blend  the  various  creeds  in  a 
single  nationality;  to  infuse  stronger  and  nobler  ele- 
ments into  the  Irish  character,  and  to  enlarge  the  range 
of  Irish  intellect.     In  literary  ability — most  certainly 


CARLYLE  AND   THE  YOUNG  IRELANDERS         289 

in  literary  taste — several  of  tliem  were  superior  to 
O'Connell,  and  they  sought  inspiration  in  quarters 
with  which  he  had  no  sympathy.  Even  apart  from 
journalism  their  contributions  to  Irish  history,  archae- 
ology, and  imaginative  literature  were  very  considerable. 
Davis,  Mangan,  Ferguson,  and  McCarthy,  though  not 
great,  were  all  of  them  true  poets.  The  historical  bal- 
lads of  Duffy  had  a  fire  and  a  strength  which  no  similar 
compositions  in  Ireland  had  shown,  and  the  singularly 
fine  lyric  in  which  Ingram  has  glorified  the  rebels  of 
'98  is  probably  destined  to  hold  a  permanent  place  in 
English  poetry. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  Carlyle,  who  detested 
and  despised  O'Connell,  and  who  had  certainly  no 
great  admiration  for  Irish  character  or  aspirations, 
found  among  the  Young  Irelanders  some  of  his  earliest 
and  most  enthusiastic  disciples.  More  than  any  other 
Avriter  of  his  age  he  appealed  to  the  moral  enthusiasm 
of  the  younger  generation  of  his  contemporaries,  and 
at  a  time  when  he  was  very  little  appreciated  in  Eng- 
land his  works  were  eagerly  read  and  discussed  in 
Young  Ireland  circles.  With  two  conspicuous  mem- 
bers of  the  party  he  formed  a  personal  friendship,  and 
to  the  end  of  his  life  he  spoke  of  them  with  sincere 
respect,  though  with  the  pity  which  was  due  to  genuine 
talent  essentially  wasted  or  perverted.  Duffy  had  been 
his  companion  during  his  tour  in  Ireland,  and  he  long 
after  wrote  one  of  the  best  accounts  of  Carlyle's  con- 
versation and  personality.  One  of  the  last  nights  Car- 
lyle spent  in  Ireland  was  under  the  roof  of  John 
Mitchel,  and  it  was  characteristic  of  Mitchel  that  when 
he  first  visited  London  the  only  thing  he  cared  to  see 
was  Carlyle  in  his  Chelsea  home.  The  influence  of  the 
great  Scotch  teacher  may,  indeed,  be  most  plainly  seen 
in  the  admirable  prose  of  the  Irish  rebel.     In  Carlyle's 

VOL.  II.  19 


290      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

journal  there  is  this  characteristic  though  not,  I  think, 
wholly  just  passage: — '  Both  Duff}^  and  Mitchel  I  have 
always  regarded  as  specimens  of  the  best  kind  of  Irish 
youth,  seduced  like  thousands  of  them  in  their  early 
day  into  courses  that  were  at  once  mad  and  ridiculous, 
and  which  nearly  ruined  the  life  of  both,  by  the  big 
Beggarman  who  had  15,000/.  a  year  and  jjvo  pudor  ! 
the  favour  of  English  ministers  instead  of  the  pillory 
from  them,  for  professing  blarney  with  such  and  still 
worse  results. '  ^ 

Mangan — a  man  of  true  genius  whose  wretched  life 
was  a  prolonged  struggle  with  poverty  and  drink,  and 
who  was  only  in  a  very  small  degree  a  politician,  was 
deeply  imbued  with  German  literature  and  produced 
admirable  translations  from  German  writers.  Foreign, 
and  especially  French  sympathies,  were  cultivated,  and 
foreign  currents  of  thought,  which  were  by  no  means 
purely  Catholic,  were  carefully  studied.  The  doctrine 
of  nationalities,  which  based  all  rightful  political  power 
on  the  consent  of  the  majority,  and  which  regarded 
each  nation  as  a  distinct  entity  with  an  indefeasible 
right  to  separate  government,  was  now  playing  an  im- 
portant part  in  continental  politics,  and  it  lay  at  the 
root  of  the  revolutionary  movement  which  convulsed 
Europe  in  1848.  It  seemed  to  harmonize  well  with  the 
Irish  repeal  agitation,  but  as  an  abstract  doctrine  it  was 
not  favoured  by  the  Church,  and  Davis,  who  preached 
it  most  ]30werfully,  has  declared  that  in  Ireland  it  was 
not  of  Catholic  origin,  but  first  sprang  up  in  the  young 
men's  debating  societies  of  Trinity  College.'  The 
'  Nation  '  enthusiastically  supported  it,  and  great  efforts 
were  made  to  revive  or  strengthen  everything  distinc- 

*  Froude's  Carlyle,  i.  399. 

'  See  a  remarkable  paper  of  Davis,  in  Gavan  Duffy's  Young 
Ireland,  p.  527. 


IRISH  TORYISM  291 

tive  in  Irish  nationality.  The  old  names  which  had 
been  anglicised  or  forgotten  were  restored.  Irish  his- 
tory, traditions,  and  antiquities  were  much  studied. 
The  historical  associations  connected  with  different 
localities  were  collected,  and  Davis  ardently  threw  him- 
self into  a  movement  for  teaching  and  diffusing  the 
Irish  language. 

It  was  truly  said  that  up  to  this  time  whatever  could 
be  called  literature  in  Ireland  belonged  almost  exclu- 
sively to  the  Tories.  Moore,  indeed,  was  a  great  excep- 
tion, but  most  literary  talent  towards  the  middle  of  the 
century  was  connected  with  the  '  Dublin  University 
Magazine,'  which  had  attained  a  very  high  place  in 
periodical  literature.  Lever,  Carleton,  Lefanu,  Fergu- 
son, Isaac  Butt,  William  Wilde,  and  two  remarkable 
brothers,  Samuel  and  Mortimer  O'SuUivan,  were  its 
leading  contributors.  It  was  imbued  throughout  with 
a  strongly  accentuated  Toryism,  and  although  it  would 
be  unfair  to  assert  that  all  its  contributors  fully  shared 
its  politics,  there  seems  little  doubt  that  nearly  all  were 
in  general  sympathy  with  them.  In  truth,  those  who 
will  carefully  study  Irish  history  and  character  during 
the  nineteenth  century  can  hardly  fail  to  remark  that 
the  proportion  of  the  best  intellect  which  took  the  Tory 
side  in  politics  was  much  larger  in  Ireland  than  in  Eng- 
land. This  was  not,  I  think,  mainly  due  to  selfish  in- 
terests connected  with  the  Protestant  ascendency,  nor 
was  it  at  all  confined  to  active  or  professional  poli- 
ticians. It  is  equally  true  of  able  and  discriminating 
men  of  both  creeds  who  were  engaged  in  literature,  or 
in  other  lines  of  life  unconnected  with  politics,  and 
who  formed  their  judgments  with  perfect  independence 
and  impartiality. 

The  explanation  can,  I  think,  be  easily  discovered. 
In  the  present  generation  party  principles  have  been  so 


292      LEADERS   OF   PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 

blended  and  confused  that  few  generalisations  can  be 
drawn;  but  the  Whigs  of  1832  and  the  Liberals  of  the 
Manchester  school  had  very  distinct  political  doctrines. 
These  doctrines  were  eminently  fitted  for  the  conditions 
of  English  life,  and  have,  in  my  own  judgment,  con- 
tributed largely  to  the  progress  and  prosperity  of  the 
nation;  but  it  was  the  weak  point  of  their  earlier  advo- 
cates tliat  they  were  accustomed  to  assume  that  the  in- 
stitutions and  the  policies  that  were  most  suited  to 
England  in  their  own  time  were  also  the  best  for  all 
other  countries.  Their  political  millennium  was  a  uni- 
versal diffusion  of  the  British  Constitution  either  on  a 
middle  class  or  a  more  democratic  basis;  of  the  British 
system  of  trial  by  jury  and  a  free  press;  of  the  British 
maxims  of  free  trade.  In  Ireland  men  of  real  ability 
soon  came  to  see  that  these  things  worked  far  otherwise 
than  in  England.  They  perceived  that  the  area  of 
self-governing  power  was  much  narrower;  that  there 
were  elements  in  the  country  which  vitiated  profoundly 
the  action  of  poj^ular  institutions;  that  an  administra- 
tion of  the  law  which  was  in  one  country  admirably 
fitted  to  protect  life,  liberty,  and  property,  to  secure 
the  innocent  and  punish  the  guilty,  often  led  in  the 
other  to  the  most  scandalous  travesties  of  justice;  that 
free  trade  and  unlimited  competition  and  non-inter- 
vention of  Government  were  very  far  from  having  the 
same  effects  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel;  that  both 
the  economical  condition  of  their  country  and  the  char- 
acter and  tendencies  of  its  people  required  a  wholly 
different  amount  of  State  assistance,  restraint  and  in- 
itiative. Hence  a  strong  tendency  among  able  Irish- 
men to  oppose,  or  at  least  to  distrust,  the  currents  of 
liberal  thought  that  were  dominating  in  English 
politics. 

The  Nationalist  movement,  however,  created  a  gen- 


O'CONNELL   AND   THE   YOUNG  IRELANDERS       293 

uine  intellectual  entliusiasm  which  was  altogether  dis- 
tinct from  both  Whiggism  and  Toryism,  and  which 
was  at  the  same  time  so  powerful  that  it  attracted  men 
from  all  sides,  including  some  of  the  writers  of  the 
'  University  Magazine.'  When  the  poetry  of  the  *  Na- 
tion '  was  collected  into  a  volume  it  is  said  to  have  had 
a  larger  circulation  than  any  book  that  had  appeared 
in  Ireland  since  the  Union,  and  it  acquired  a  deep  and 
lasting  hold  over  the  imaginations  of  the  people.  The 
old  doggerel  rhymes;  the  fantastic  prophecies,  the  tales 
of  legendary  highwaymen  or  dubious  martyrs  which 
had  once  been  the  popular  reading  of  the  people  were 
largely  replaced  by  the  tales  and  ballads  of  the  '  Na- 
tion,' and  by  a  crowd  of  little  books  on  Irish  history  or 
biography  which  issued  from  the  marvellously  prolific 
pens  of  the  young  writers.  Many  of  them  were  too 
much  saturated  and  discoloured  by  anti-English  ani- 
mosity to  have  much  enduring  value,  but  they  often 
showed  real  research  and  literary  skill,  and  they  were 
sold  by  tens  of  thousands.  It  was  observed,  indeed, 
that  in  the  literary  criticism  of  the  '  Nation  '  itself  the 
sense  of  literature  often  dominated  over  political  bias, 
and,  much  to  the  displeasure  of  O'Connell,  praise  and 
blame  were  sometimes  awarded  very  independently  of 
the  politics  of  the  writer  who  was  under  review. 

O'Connell  had  not  much  purely  literary  taste,  and, 
like  most  practical  politicians,  he  had  much  distrust  of 
literary  politics  and  politicians  ^nd  of  large  and  cosmo- 
politan principles.  lie  defended  his  own  agitations  on 
distinctively  Irish  or  Catholic  grounds  and  on  the  old 
Whig  doctrines  of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  He  knew 
and  cared  for  Irish  history,  though  chiefly  as  furnish- 
ing abundant  materials  for  political  arguments,  but  he 
had  no  great  sympathy  with  the  revival  of  Irish  archae- 
ology, and  he  had  no  sympathy  at  all  with  the  project 


294      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN   IRELAND 

of  extending  the  Irish  language.  Though  he  himself 
came  from  an  Irish-speaking  district  and  spoke  the 
language  with  perfect  ease,  his  eminently  practical 
mind  regarded  the  new  movement  as  absurd.  The 
difference  of  languages,  he  was  accustomed  to  say,  was 
first  introduced  into  the  world  as  a  punishment,  and 
the  superior  utility  of  the  English  tongue  as  the  me- 
dium of  all  modern  communication  was  so  great  that 
he  saw  without  regret  the  gradual  disuse  of  Irish.  ^  He 
spoke  warmly  of  Davis,  whose  charm  and  purity  of 
character  were  as  conspicuous  as  his  brilliant  talent; 
he  invited  Duffy  to  Darrynane,  and  in  a  letter  written 
in  October  1844  he  disclaimed  all  hostility  to  the 
'Nation,'  and  bantered  its  writers  on  their  excessive 
susceptibility;  but  it  seems  probable  that  even  then  he 
looked  on  the  new  school  with  a  little  contempt  and 
distrust,perhaps  also  with  a  little  jealousy  of  its  grow- 
ing influence. 

The  Young  Irelanders  in  their  turn  in  their  private 
letters  and  meetings  w^ere  accustomed  to  ridicule  the 
exaggerations,  the  flattery,  the  tawdry  rhetoric,  the 
constant  repetition  of  a  few  impressive  sentences  or 
metaphors  in  O'Connell's  mob  oratory.  They  resented 
the  manner  in  which  by  browbeating  or  coarse  banter, 
or  by  the  simple  exercise  of  his  overwhelming  author- 
ity, he  crushed  all  opposition  in  the  Conciliation  Hall. 
They  resented  still  more  his  evident  wish  to  delegate 
during  his  long  absences  his  authority  to  his  son  John, 
for  whose  ability  and  character  they  had  much  con- 
tempt; they  thought,  too,  with  much  reason,  that  there 
was  some  shiftiness  in  O'Connell's  dealings  with  money; 
that  it  was  not  right  that  a  great  revenue  raised  for 
public  purposes  should  be  practically  at  the  complete 


^  See  O'Neill  Daunt's  Personal  Recollections,  i.  14-15. 


QUARREL   WITH   THE    YOUNG   IRELANDERS       295 

disposal  of  a  single  man  who  gave  no  account  of  its 
expenditure. 

All  these  things  caused  some  estrangement,  but 
graver  differences  were  behind.  The  attitude  of  the 
'  Nation/  upholding  in  its  main  lines  Peel's  system  of 
mixed  education,  was  bitterly  resented  by  O'Oonnell, 
and  in  newspapers  which  supported  him  the  accusation 
of  infidelity  began  to  be  raised  against  the  rising  party. 
There  appears  to  have  been  little  or  no  foundation  for 
the  charge,  though  it  is  quite  true  that  the  Young  Ire- 
landers  were  much  less  under  clerical  influence  than 
the  great  body  of  the  repealers.  Several  of  them,  in- 
cluding Davis  and  Mitch  el,  were  Protestants,  and  the 
leading  Catholics  in  the  party,  though,  I  believe,  of 
unimpeachable  orthodoxy,  wrote  as  politicians,  and  not 
as  theologians.  O'Connell,  however,  had  no  right  to 
object  to  this.  He  had  himself  always  avowed  that  his 
great  object  was  to  unite  the  two  creeds  on  the  basis  of 
secular  politics,  and  on  the  question  of  the  Queen's  col- 
leges the  '  Nation '  was  the  representative  of  a  large  and 
probably  preponderating  portion  of  the  educated  Catho- 
lic laymen,  and  of  a  not  inconsiderable  portion  of  the 
priesthood.  The  subject  was  introduced  into  Concilia- 
tion Hall.  Davis  defended  the  policy  of  accepting, 
with  some  qualifications,  the  new  scheme.  O'Connell 
in  his  reply  treated  him  with  great  discourtesy;  he  de- 
clared that  the  '  Nation  '  was  in  no  sense  the  represent- 
ative of  Irish  Catholic  opinion,  and  ended  by  exclaiming 
in  angry  tones,  *  Young  Ireland  may  play  what  pranks 
they  please.  I  do  not  envy  them  their  name.  I  shall 
stand  by  Old  Ireland,  and  I  have  some  slight  notion 
that  Old  Ireland  will  stand  by  me.' 

The  quarrel  was  patched  up,  and  O'Connell  after- 
wards tried  by  some  gracious  Avords  to  smooth  it  down, 
but  it  left  an  enduring  bitterness  behind  it.     Some  of 


296      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  younger  priests — among  others  a  certain  Father 
Kenyon,  who  was  a  man  of  considerable  ability  and 
very  violent  politics — steadily  supported  the  *  Nation,' 
but  the  great  body  of  the  priesthood  began  to  look  on 
it  with  suspicion.  Davis  showed  in  his  private  letters 
that  he  felt  very  doubtful  whether  he  could  continue 
long  a  member  of  the  Repeal  Association,  which  seemed 
passing  more  and  more  into  clerical  hands.  He  com- 
j^tlained  bitterly  of  ^  the  lying,  ignorant,  and  lazy  clan 
who  surround  O'Connell,'  and  said  that  he  had  a  per- 
petual struggle  with  himself  to  prevent  him  from  quit- 
ting politics  in  absolute  scorn.  Some  writers  in  the 
'  Nation '  threw  a  little  ridicule  on  the  assertion  that 
the  acquittal  of  O'Connell  by  the  Law  Lords  was  of  the 
nature  of  a  miracle.  O'Connell  wrote  that  they  were, 
no  doubt,  entitled  to  disbelieve  this  and  *  any  other 
miracle  from  the  days  of  the  Apostles  to  the  present,' 
but  they  must  suffer  Catholics  to  believe  it;  and  he 
was  greatly  scandalised  because  a  critic  in  the  '  Nation  ' 
expressed  mnch  admiration  for  the  poetry  of  Shelley, 
who  was  certainly  not  an  orthodox  writer.*  The  Re- 
peal Association  was  accustomed  to  purchase  large 
numbers  of  copies  of  the  ^Nation,'  and  to  send  them 
gratuitously  to  the  repeal  reading  rooms  in  districts 
where  more  than  10?.  had  been  subscribed  to  the  rent. 
O'Connell  now  demanded  a  pledge  from  the  editor  that 
he  would  submit  to  all  future  decisions  of  the  associa- 
tion ;  and,  as  this  pledge  was  refused,  he  gave  orders 
that  no  more  free  copies  should  be  sent. 

The  paper  had  by  this  time  acquired  such  a  circula- 
tion and  influence  that  the  measure  seems  to  have  done 
it  little  harm,  and  the  reading  rooms  very  commonly 
subscribed  for  themselves,  but  it  clearly  showed  the 

^Duffy's  Young  Ireland,  p.  619;  Four  Years  of  Irish  History, 
p.  104-105, 


QUARREL  WITH   THE   YOUNG   IRELANDERS       297 

tension  that  had  arisen.  It  became  greater  during  the 
absence  of  O'Connell,  when  his  son  presided  over  the 
association  and  gave  it  a  completely  Catholic  tone.  The 
understanding  that  sectarian  topics  should  be  excluded 
from  discussion  was  practically  ignored.  There  were 
discussions  on  the  relation  of  the  English  press  to  the 
Holy  See;  on  some  internal  differences  that  had  arisen 
among  the  German  Catholics;  on  the  authenticity  of 
the  Holy  Coat  of  Treves.  Macnevin,  who  was  himself 
a  Catholic,  complained  that  the  Repeal  Association  was 
now  merely  a  Catholic  association. 

There  was  another  point  on  which  the  two  schools 
of  repealers  gravely  differed,  and  on  this  O'Connell  was 
on  firmer  ground.  His  complaint  could  hardly  be 
more  tersely  expressed  than  by  a  witticism  ascribed  to 
the  great  Lord  Plunket.  One  of  his  friends  once  found 
the  old  Chancellor  perusing  the  columns  of  the  '  Na- 
tion '  when  it  first  appeared,  and  asked  him  what  was 
the  tone  of  the  new  journal.  Plunket  answered  laconi- 
cally '  Wolfe  Tone. '  The  truth  was  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  read  it  with  candour  without  perceiving  that 
its  whole  tendency  was  to  hold  up  as  heroes  or  models 
rebels  against  English  rule,  to  glorify  armed  rebellion, 
to  stimulate  the  feelings  that  produce  it.  Probably  in 
the  earliest  stage  of  the  movement  the  leading  members 
did  not  clearly  foresee  such  a  result,  but  the  tendency 
soon  became  unmistakable.  0' Council  was  certainly 
not  guiltless  in  this  matter.  In  order  to  win  the  ap- 
plause of  his  monster  meetings  he  had  often  used  most 
outrageous  and  mischievous  language  about  the  English 
nation  and  the  English  government  of  Ireland,  but  he 
had  almost  always  been  careful  to  qualify  it  by  declar- 
ing that  he  aimed  only  at  the  attainment  of  constitu- 
tional objects  through  constitutional  means,  and  depre- 
cated every  kind  of  violence.     He  had  no  objection  to 


298       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

commemorate  the  Irish  warriors  of  a  remote  or  legen- 
dary past,  but  he  had  a  lifelong  contempt  for  the  rebels 
of  1798,  and  contended,  with  much  truth,  that  but  for 
them  the  Union  could  not  have  been  carried.  These 
rebels  were  now  extolled  as  martyrs  in  the  '  Nation,' 
and  Wolfe  Tone,  as  Lord  Plunket  said,  had  become 
their  special  hero.  There  was  much  talk  of  a  distinct 
Irish  foreign  policy,  and  there  were  not  obscure  inti- 
mations that  help  from  America  and  France  was  hoped 
for,  and  that  quarrels  between  those  Powers  and  Eng- 
land were  looked  on  with  much  satisfaction.  An  Eng- 
lish newspaper  had  dwelt  on  the  absurdity  of  a  rebellion 
in  a  country  which,  like  Ireland,  was  interlaced  with 
railways,  and  the  '  Nation '  replied  by  an  elaborate  dis- 
sertation on  the  best  means  of  destroying  railways  in 
the  event  of  invasion.  '  It  might,'  said  the  writer,  '  be 
useful  to  promulgate  through  the  country,  to  be  read 
by  all  re^Deal  wardens  in  their  parishes,  a  few  short 
and  easy  rules  as  to  the  mode  of  dealing  with  railways 
in  case  of  any  enemy  daring  to  make  hostile  use  of  them.* 
This  article  was  defended  by  the  editor  of  the  '  Na- 
tion,' but  its  author  was  John  Mitchel,  to  whom  the 
increasing  violence  of  the  paper  may  be  largely  attrib- 
uted. Thomas  Davis,  perhaps  the  most  brilliant,  and 
certainly  the  most  attractive,  of  the  Young  Irelanders, 
died  unexpectedly  after  a  short  illness,  in  September 
1845,  and  his  removal  increased  the  influence  of  Mitchel 
in  the  party.  Mitchel  was  a  man  of  great,  but,  I  think, 
exclusively  literary,  ability,  and  was,  no  doubt,  honest 
according  to  his  lights,  but  he  was  utterly  unpractical 
and  uncompromising,  and,  like  many  Irish  'patriots,' 
his  politics  amounted  to  little  more  than  a  blind,  sav- 
age, and  stupid  hatred  of  England.     After  O'Connell's 


^  Duffy's  Life,  i.  140. 


AKTICLE   BY   MITCHEL  299 

death  he  quarrelled  violently  with  his  associates  and  set 
up  a  frantically  rebellious  paper  of  his  own,  which  was 
cut  short  by  his  condemnation  to  penal  servitude;  but 
his  most  abiding  influence  is  to  be  found  in  his  agrarian 
policy.  Adopting,  with  little  or  no  acknowledgment, 
the  theories  of  Lalor,  he  contended  that  the  true  basis 
of  a  national  struggle  in  Ireland  must  be  plunder;  the 
seizure  without  purchase  or  compensation  of  all  landed 
property  held  under  English  law.  By  such  hopes  and 
incentives  alone  could  a  genuine  '  National '  enthusiasm 
he  aroused. 

To  men  and  opinions  of  this  kind  O'Connell  was 
utterly  opposed.  His  repeated  declarations  that  he 
only  desired  to  carry  repeal  if  it  could  be  done  without 
bloodshed  or  injury  to  property  represented  his  most 
genuine  feeling,  and  his  horror  of  rebellion  amounted 
to  a  passion.  The  attempt  of  the  Young  Irelanders  to 
lay  the  foundation  of  an  alliance  with  France  and 
America  against  England  filled  him  with  indignation. 
He  said  that,  for  his  own  part,  he  would  not  accept 
repeal  if  it  came  by  the  assistance  of  France,  and  at  a 
time  when  the  controversy  about  the  Oregon  territory 
threatened  a  breach  with  America,  he  declared,  to  the 
intense  disgust  of  the  Young  Ireland  party,  that  if 
England  conciliated  Ireland  by  a  few  righteous  mea- 
sures, Ireland  would  be  heart  and  soul  with  her  in  the 
struggle,  and  would  '  help  to  bring  down  the  pride  of 
the  American  Eagle.'  He  at  once  denounced  Mitchel's 
railway  article,  and  especially  the  allusion  to  the  repeal 
wardens,  and  when  the  Government  proceeded  to  prose- 
cute the  editor  he  refused  to  take  any  part  in  his  de- 
fence. He  repeated  emphatically  that  the  special  and 
distinctive  characteristic  of  his  agitation  was  that  it 
rested  on  the  belief  that  every  necessary  reform  could 
be  attained  by  legal  and  constitutional  means;  that 


300      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

under  no  circumstances  should  physical  force  be  resorted 
to  as  a  remedy  for  political  grievances;  that  '  no  politi- 
cal amelioration  is  worth  one  drop  of  human  blood.' 
The  Repeal  Association,  he  said,  was  a  perfectly  legal 
organisation,  and  he  would  have  no  part  in  any  organi- 
sation that  was  not  so.  When  it  was  first  founded  it 
was  based  on  a  distinct  disclaimer  of  '  all  physical  force, 
violence,  or  breach  of  the  law.'  Its  only  means  of 
action  were  to  be  '  peaceable,  legal  and  constitutional 
combinations  of  all  classes,  sects  and  persuasions  of  her 
Majesty's  loyal  subjects.'  If  the  Association  admitted 
men  who  preached  the  doctrine  that  physical  force 
might  be  resorted  to,  under  certain  contingencies,  to 
attain  its  objects,  then  O'Connell  declared,  as  a  lawyer, 
that  the  whole  Association  would  be  tainted  with  the 
guilt  of  treason  and  all  its  members  would  be  liable  to 
prosecution. 

The  proposition  that  '  no  political  amelioration  is 
worth  one  drop  of  human  blood '  could  hardly  be  ac- 
cepted in  its  literal  sense  by  anyone  except  Quakers, 
and  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  was  indignantly  repudi- 
ated in  Young  Ireland  circles.  When  the  party  was 
originally  started,  most  of  its  members  were  devoted  ad- 
mirers of  O'Connell,  and  they  fully  acknowledged  him  as 
a  great  pacific  and  even  religious  leader,  preaching  the 
doctrines  of  moral  force.     As  one  of  their  poets  wrote : — 

I  saw  him  at  the  hour  of  prayer,  when  morning's  earliest 

daw^n 
Was  breaking  o'er  the  mountain  tops,  o'er  grassy  dell  and 

lawn. 

His  hands  were  clasped  upon  his  breast,  his  eye  was 

raised  above, 
I  heard  those  full  and  solemn  tones  in  words  of  faith  and 

love. 


THE   MORAL  FORCE    DOCTRINE  301 

He  prayed  that  those  who  wronged  him  might  forever  be 

forgiven. 
Oh,  who  would  sa/  such  prayers  as  these  are  not  received 

in  Heaven  ? 
I  saw  him  next  amid  the  best  and  noblest  of  our  isle — 
There  was  the  same  majestic  form,  the  same  heart-kindling 

smile ; 
But  grief  was  on  that  princely  brow — for  others  still  he 

mourned, 
He  gazed  upon  poor  fettered  slaves  and  his  heart  within 

him  burned. 
He  vowed  before  the  captives'  God  to  break  the  captives' 

chaio — 
To  bind  the  broken  heart  and  set  the  bondsmen  free  again ; 
And  fit  he  was  our  chief  to  be  in  triumph  or  in  need. 
Who  never  wronged  his  deadliest  foe  in  thought  or  word 

or  deed. 


And  many  an  eye  now  quailed  with  shame  and  many  a 

cheek  now  glowed 
As  he  paid  them  back  with  words  of  love  for  every  curse 

bestowed. 
I  thought  of  his  unceasing  care,  his  never-ending  zeal ; 
I  heard  the  watchword  burst  from  all — the  gathering  cry, 

Repeal ! — 
And  as  his  eyes  were  raised  to  Heaven — from  whence  his 

mission  came, 
He  stood  amid  the  thousands  there  a  monarch  save  in 

name! 


This  was,  indeed,  an  idealised  O'Connell,  but  it  was 
at  least  a  picture  of  O'Connell  as  he  appeared  to  some 
of  the  early  Young  Irelanders;  and  they  had  their  full 
share  in  the  natural  literary  tendency  to  exaggerate  the 
power  of  the  spoken  or  written  word.  As  Macarthy 
wrote : — 


302      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

When  the  Lord  created  the  earth  and  the  sea, 

The  stars,  and  the  glorious  sun, 
The  Godhead  spoke,  and  the  universe  woke, 

And  the  mighty  work  was  done ! 
Let  a  word  be  flung  from  the  orator's  tongue, 

Or  a  drop  from  the  fearless  pen. 
And  the  chains  accurst  asunder  burst 

That  fettered  the  minds  of  men. 

Oh !  these  are  the  arms  with  which  we  fight. 

The  swords  in  which  we  trust, 
Which  no  tyrant  hand  shall  dare  to  brand. 

Which  time  cannot  stain  or  rust. 
When  these  we  bore  we  triumphed  before. 

With  these  we'll  triumph  again, 
And  the  world  shall  say  no  power  can  stay 

The  voice  or  the  fearless  pen. 

But  the  spirit  of  Young  Ireland  was  rapidly  chang- 
ing. Its  present  doctrine  was  much  more  truly  repre- 
sented by  the  lines  of  Davis: — 

The  tribune's  tongue  or  poet's  pen 
May  sow  the  seed  in  prostrate  men, 
But  'tis  the  soldier's  sword  alone 
Can  reap  the  harvest  when  'tis  grown. 

No  one,  indeed,  can  read  the  *  Spirit  of  the  Nation ' 
without  perceiving  that  its  writers  were  appealing  ha- 
bitually to  the  rebellious  and  military  elements  in  the 
country. 

In  their  prose  as  well  as  in  their  poetry  the  same 
spirit  prevailed.  Thus,  to  take  but  one  instance,  their 
most  brilliant  rhetorician,  Thomas  Meagher,  declared 
in  one  of  his  speeches,^  'There  are  but  two  plans  for 
our  consideration — the  one  within  the  law,  the  other 


*  Speeches  of  Thomas  F.  Meagher  (New  York),  pp.  213,  214. 


GLORIFICATION  OF   THE  SWORD  303 

without  tlie  law.  Let  us  take  the  latter.  I  will  then 
ask  you,  is  an  insurrection  practicable  ?  Prove  to  me 
that  it  is,  and  I  for  one  will  vote  for  it  this  very  night. 
You  know  well,  my  friends,  that  I  am  not  one  of  those 
tame  moralists  who  say  that  liberty  is  not  worth  a  drop 
of  blood.  Men  who  subscribe  to  such  a  maxim  are  fit 
for  out-of-door  relief,  and  for  nothing  better.  Against 
this  miserable  maxim  the  noblest  virtue  that  has  saved 
and  sanctified  humanity  appears  in  judgment.  From 
the  blue  waters  of  the  Bay  of  Salamis — from  the  valley 
over  which  the  sun  stood  still  and  lit  the  Israelites  to 
victory — from  the  cathedral  in  which  the  sword  of 
Poland  has  been  sheathed  in  the  shroud  of  Kosciusko — 
from  the  convent  of  St.  Isidore,  where  the  fiery  hand 
that  rent  the  ensign  of  St.  George  upon  the  plains  of 
Ulster  has  crumbled  into  dust — from  the  sands  of  the 
desert,  where  the  wild  genius  of  the  Algerine  so  long 
has  scared  the  eagle  of  the  Pyrenees — from  the  ducal 
palace  in  this  kingdom,  where  the  memory  of  the  gal- 
lant Geraldine  enhances  more  than  royal  favour  the 
nobility  of  his  race — from  the  solitary  grave  within  this 
mute  city  which  a  dying  request  has  left  without  an 
epitaph — oh!  from  every  spot  where  heroism  has  had 
a  sacrifice  or  a  triumph,  a  voice  breaks  in  upon  the 
cringing  crowd  that  cherishes  this  maxim,  crying  out, 
"Away  with  it!  away  with  it!"  ' 

O'Connell,  on  the  other  hand,  lost  no  opportunity 
of  extolling  the  maxim  which  Meagher  denounced,  and 
he  made  it  one  of  his  first  objects  to  sunder  decisively 
the  Repeal  Association  from  all  connection  with  rebels, 
and  from  all  responsibility  for  their  words  and  acts.  He 
answered  their  heroics  about  dying  for  their  country 
with  characteristic  scorn:  'It  is,  no  doubt,  a  very  fine 
thing  to  die  for  one's  country,  but  believe  me,  one  liv- 
ing patriot  is  worth  a  whole  churchyard  full  of  dead 


304      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

ones.'  He  treated  with  utter  incredulity  the  declara- 
tions of  Mitchel  and  others  of  the  party  that  they  did 
not  contemplate  or  desire  a  resort  to  physical  force, 
and  he  insisted  upon  imposing  as  a  test  upon  the  Repeal 
Association  that  all  its  members  should,  on  pain  of  im- 
mediate expulsion,  subscribe  the  *  Peace  Resolutions ' 
declaring  that  physical  force  and  other  illegal  means 
must  in  no  case  be  resorted  to  for  the  achievement  of 
their  political  ends.  It  was  impossible  that  the  Young 
Ireland  party  with  their  antecedents  and  their  teaching 
could  accept  such  a  test,  and  they  were  accordingly 
compelled  to  secede  from  the  Repeal  Association. 

The  conduct  of  O'Connell  during  this  struggle  seems 
to  me  to  show  no  weakness  or  indecision,  but  it  was  the 
belief  of  the  Young  Irelanders  that  it  was  dictated  to 
him  by  his  son  John,  who,  with  none  of  his  father's 
ability,  had  much  of  his  father's  ambition,  and  who  was 
at  bitter  enmity  with  them.  There  is  probably  some 
portion  of  truth  in  this,  for  O'Connell  was  visibly  aged, 
and  when  his  quarrel  with  the  Young  Irelanders  cul- 
minated, at  the  end  of  July  1846,  he  was  within  a  few 
months  of  his  death.  He  died  of  softening  of  the 
brain,  and  a  very  competent  medical  authority  declared 
that  it  must  have  begun  at  least  two  years  before  the 
end. 

From  the  time  of  the  secession  he  could  reckon  on 
nothing  but  hostility  from  Young  Ireland.  In  Sir 
Gavan  Duffy's  history  of  these  years,  O'Connell  always 
appears  as  half -patriot,  half -charlatan — a  man  of  amaz- 
ing abilities,  sincerely  devoted  to  his  people  and  his 
creed,  and  in  many  respects  in  advance  of  his  time,  but 
untruthful,  rapacious,  unscrupulous,  overbearing,  very 
rarely  acting  through  motives  that  were  purely  single- 
minded  and  disinterested. 

The  correspondence  which  Gavan  Duffy  has  pub- 


HOSTILITY   OF  THE  YOUNG  IRELANDERS        305 

lished  shows  how  widely  this  estimate  was  adopted  by 
other  members  of  the  party.  The  '  Nation '  was  now 
constantly  hostile,  and  after  O'Connell's  death,  and 
before  he  was  yet  laid  in  his  Irish  grave,  a  remarkable 
appreciation  of  him,  written  by  Father  Kenyon,  ap- 
peared in  its  columns,  describing  him  as  a  grand 
liomme  manque.  Mitchel  afterwards  pronounced  him 
to  have  been,  next  to  the  British  Government,  the 
greatest  enemy  Ireland  ever  had,  for  it  was  owing  to 
his  abiding  influence  that  the  insurrection  of  1848 
ended  in  an  absurd  and  contemptible  failure,  and  in 
his  ^  Jail  Journal '  he  has  drawn  a  very  characteristic 
portrait  of  his  former  leader.  *  Poor  old  Dan !  wonder- 
ful, mighty,  jovial  and  mean  old  man!  with  silver 
tongue  and  smile  of  witchery  and  heart  of  melting 
ruth!  lying  tongue!  smile  of  treachery!  heart  of  un- 
fathomable fraud !  What  a  royal  yet  vulgar  soul,  with 
the  keen  eye  and  potent  swoop  of  a  generous  eagle  of 
Cairn  Tual — with  the  base  servility  of  a  hound,  and 
the  cold  cruelty  of  a  spider!  Think  of  his  speech  for 
John  Magee,  the  most  powerful  forensic  achievement 
since  before  Demosthenes,  and  then  think  of  the 
"gorgeous  and  gossamer^'  theory  of  moral  and  peace- 
ful agitation,  the  most  astounding  orrjanon  of  public 
swindling  since  first  man  bethought  him  of  obtaining 
money  under  false  pretences.  And  after  one  has 
thought  of  all  this  and  more,  what  then  can  a  man 
say  ?  What  but  pray  that  Irish  earth  may  lie  light  on 
O'Connell's  breast,  and  that  the  good  God  who  knew 
how  to  create  so  wondrous  a  creature  may  have  mercy 
upon  his  soul.'  * 

Duffy  has  collected  many  instances  of  the  sympathy 
that  was  shown  from  many  quarters  for  the  Young  Ire- 

*  Jail  Journal,  p.  157. 

VOL.  IL  20 


306      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

landers  during  their  struggle  with  O'Connell,  and  of 
his  declining  popularity.  There  were  large  secessions 
from  the  Eepeal  Association,  and  many  of  the  repeal 
wardens  threw  up  their  post.  But  when  all  this  is 
said,  it  is  tolerably  plain  that  the  old  leader  carried 
with  him  the  great  body  of  the  Irish  Catholics.  The 
overwhelming  majority  of  the  priesthood  were  behind 
him,  and  they  had  not  lost  their  power.  Bishop  after 
bishop  denounced  the  Voltairian  or  infidel  tendencies 
of  the  new  party.  Some  of  its  leaders  were  mobbed, 
and  the  coal  porters  of  Dublin  who  were  among  O'Con- 
nelFs  most  devoted  followers  constantly  disturbed  their 
meetings.  After  O'Connell's  death  the  popular  indig- 
nation against  the  Young  Irelanders  grew  still  stronger. 
*  The  physical  force  men,' wrote  Lord  Clarendon  in 
1847,  '  whenever  they  meet  for  sjiouting  have  to  be 
escorted  home  by  two  or  three  hundred  police,  or  not 
one  of  them  would  escape  alive  from  the  moral  persua- 
sion party,  who  miss  no  oj)portunity  of  getting  up  a 
ferocious  row.  *  Moral  persuasion  always  waylays  phy- 
sical force  and  beats  it  within  a,n  inch  of  its  life."^ 
The  Young  Irelanders  were  accused  of  having  mur- 
dered O'Connell;  in  the  election  of  1847  they  were 
almost  uniformly  defeated  at  the  poll,  and  some  of 
them  scarcely  escaped  the  fury  of  the  mob.'  The 
ignominious,  but  happily  bloodless,  issue  of  the  abor- 
tive rebellion  of  1848  was,  as  Mitchel  truly  said,  mainly 
due  to  the  action  of  the  priests  who  themselves  acted 
upon  the  teaching  of  O'Connell,  though  something 
must  also  be  attributed  to  the  absolute  ineptitude  of 
the  Young  Ireland  leaders,  who  issued  furious  rhetori- 
cal addresses  urging  the  people  to  resistance,  discussed 
their  plans  openly  in  newspaper  columns,  but  made  no 

^  Laughton's  Life  of  Henry  Reeve,  i.  186,  187. 
'  See  a  graphic  picture  in  Duffy's  Life,  i.  209. 


CONTINUANCE  OF  THE  AGITATION  307 

preparation  whatever  for  arming  and  organising  rebel- 
lion or  securing  leaders  of  the  smallest  military  ability. 
Some  40,000  excellently  equipped  British  soldiers  were 
in  Ireland,  prepared  to  repress  the  outbreak  when  it 
came.  A  few  Irish  policemen  proved  amply  sufficient 
for  the  task. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  divisions  between  O'Con- 
nell  and  the  Young  Ireland  party,  there  was  one  other 
capital  difference  between  them.  Ifc  was  no  less  than 
the  continuance  of  the  repeal  agitation.  When  O'Con- 
nell  was  released  from  prison  he  found  the  nation  wound 
up  to  the  wildest  enthusiasm  both  for  himself  and  for 
repeal.  It  was  impossible  for  him  at  such  a  moment 
to  recede,  even  if  he  had  wished  it,  and  as  long  as  Peel 
was  at  the  head  of  a  powerful  ministry,  it  is  hardly 
likely  that  he  wished  altogether  to  do  so.  As  we  have 
seen,  however,  he  carefully  abstained  from  pushing  for- 
ward the  agitation  or  even  from  improving  the  advan- 
tages which  his  legal  triumph  had  given  him.  lie 
still,  as  was  usual  with  him,  used  language  calculated 
to  flatter  all  the  hopes  of  the  people.  He  still  professed 
himself  an  ardent  repealer.  He  urged  that  no  person 
who  was  not  a  repealer  should  be  returned  to  Parlia- 
ment. He  declared  that  a  jmrty  of  sixty  to  seventy 
repealers  would  be  irresistible  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. He  wrote  a  public  letter  in  which  he  assured 
the  Whigs  that  the  rule  excluding  all  Liberals  from 
Irish  constituencies  unless  they  took  the  repeal  pledge 
would  never  be  relaxed.  He  even  warned  Sheil,  who 
had  now  definitely  severed  himself  from  the  movement, 
that  neither  his  great  services  nor  his  brilliant  talents 
would  save  him  from  expulsion  from  his  seat  at  Dun- 
garvan  unless  he  returned  to  his  former  alliance.' 


'  Duffy's  Four  Years  of  Irish  History,  pp.  30-32. 


308      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

Did  O'Connell  sincerely  mean  all  this?  The  ques- 
tion has  been  much  discussed,  but  there  can,  I  think, 
be  no  doubt  that  he  at  least  desired  a  strong  distinctive 
parliamentary  party  attached  to  himself,  and  gladly 
maintained  the  repeal  cry  as  long  as  it  was  necessary 
for  that  purpose.  It  is  also  true  that  his  relations  to 
Peel  were  such  that  he  could  expect  no  favour  in  that 
quarter,  and  as  long  as  Peel's  Government  seemed  des- 
tined for  a  long  and  powerful  career,  his  attitude  was 
certain  to  be  hostile.  It  is,  I  think,  scarcely  less  doubt- 
ful that  O'Connell's  belief  was  shaken,  and  as  soon  as 
there  was  some  prospect  of  the  Whigs  returning  to 
office  there  were  clear  signs  that  he  was  longing  to  re- 
vive his  policy  of  1834,  when  he  adjourned  indefinitely 
the  agitation  for  repeal,  allied  himself  openly  with  the 
Whig  government,  supported  it  with  all  his  power,  and 
exercised  a  great  influence  over  its  patronage. 

His  motives  must  always  be  in  some  degree  a  matter 
of  conjecture,  and  were  probably  very  mixed ;  but  it  is 
not,  I  think,  difficult  to  divine  the  most  important.  A 
man  so  sagacious  and  so  practical  must  have  seen  that 
the  attempt  to  force  repeal  by  great  pojDular  demonstra- 
tions, though  it  had  been  tried  on  the  largest  scale  in 
1843,  had  completely  failed,  and  that  if  repeal  ever 
came  it  was  not  likely  to  be  in  his  lifetime.  The  san- 
guine temperament  which  had  supported  him  through 
many  vicissitudes  was  gone,  and  it  was  replaced  by  the 
despondency  of  an  old  and  sickly  man.  He  was  con- 
scious of  failing  powers  and  of  approaching  death,  and 
he  probably  looked  with  just  alarm  to  the  future.  He 
had,  indeed,  created  in  a  great,  organised,  political 
priesthood  the  power  on  which  he  chiefly  relied  for  the 
government  of  Ireland;  but  the  dissensions  which  were 
breaking  out  among  his  following,  the  growing  strength 
of  the  revolutionary  party,  the  predatory  doctrines 


DESIRE   TO   DROP  REPEAL  309 

about  landed  property  that  were  fermenting  around 
him,  and  the  total  absence  among  his  disciples  of  any 
man  of  commanding  capacity,  all  betokened  a  period 
of  anarchy  and  convulsion  when  he  had  gone.  His 
career  was  closing  in  utter  failure.  Repeal,  which  he 
had  so  confidently  promised,  had  not  come.  He  had 
hoped  to  win  to  his  cause  the  rank  and  property  of  the 
country,  and  to  unite  with  the  Catholics  on  a  national 
basis  at  least  the  more  moderate  section  of  the  Protes- 
tants. But  he  had  totally  failed.  The  natural  leaders 
of  the  people,  the  classes  who  had  opposed  the  Union 
in  1800,  the  great  body  of  moderate  Protestants  who 
had  steadily  supported  Catholic  Emancipation  up  to 
1829,  had  all  been  alienated  by  the  repeal  agitation. 
Not  by  his  wish,  but  certainly  through  his  policy,  the 
fissures  in  Irish  life  had  become  deeper  than  ever. 

He  was  weary  of  the  whole  concern  and  would  gladly 
have  fled  from  it.  He  was  personally  on  good  terms 
with  the  Whig  leaders  and  strongly  disposed  to  act 
with  them.  As  far  back  as  September  1843,  at  a  time 
when  the  repeal  agitation  was  at  its  height,  he  wrote 
a  very  curious  letter  to  Lord  Campbell,  with  whom  he 
was  always  on  friendly  terms,  in  which  that  acute 
lawyer  clearly  saw  a  distant  overture  to  an  alliance. 
The  repeal  agitation,  he  said,  whatever  might  be  its 
other  effects,  had  at  least  made  Englishmen  of  all  par- 
ties conscious  of  the  grievances  of  Ireland,  and  he  asked 
why  the  Whig  leaders  did  not  rise  to  the  level  of  the 
time,  and,  by  proposing  a  definite  plan  for  redressing 
these  grievances,  prepare  the  way  for  conciliating  the 
Irish  and  strengthening  the  Empire.  *  Why  does  not 
Lord  John  treat  us  to  a  magniloquent  epistle  declara- 
tory of  his  determination  to  abate  the  Church  nuisance 
in  Ireland,  to  augment  our  popular  franchise,  to  vivify 
our  new  corporations,  to  mitigate  the  statute  law  as 


310       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

between  landlord  and  tenant,  to  strike  off  a  few  more 
rotten  boroughs  in  England,  and  to  give  the  represent- 
atives to  our  great  counties  ?  ' '  In  the  following  year, 
in  reply  to  a  letter  from  Charles  Buller,  he  said  that 
he  would  not  speak  for  himself,  but  that  religious 
equality,  a  restoration  of  the  law  of  landlord  and  tenant 
to  its  state  before  the  Union,  an  absentee  tax,  and  a 
strengthening  of  the  popular  element  in  the  constitu- 
encies and  the  corporations,  would  satisfy  many  of  his 
followers  and  *  mitigate  the  present  ardent  desire  for 
repeal." 

The  Whigs  were  not  altogether  irresponsive.  Lord 
John  Russell  had  been  prominent  in  censuring  the  cir- 
cumstances of  O'Connell's  trial.  He  made  a  speech  in 
the  beginning  of  1844  in  which  he  intimated  his  desire 
to  see  a  complete  equality  established  between  Catholics, 
Anglicans,  and  Presbyterians."  On  the  great  question 
of  the  repeal  of  the  Union  I  do  not  believe  that  he  ever 
really  wavered ;  but  there  were  rumours  that  the  notion 
of  a  subordinate  federal  parliament  was  at  this  time  seri- 
ously discussed  in  the  Whig  councils,  and  that  they 
looked  with  some  favour  on  the  proposal  to  hold  ses- 
sions of  the  Imperial  Parliament  occasionally  in  Dub- 
lin.* They  certainly  supported  O'Connell's  opposition 
to  the  Queen's  colleges  in  a  manner  that  did  them  no 
credit.  If  by  a  new  alliance  O'Connell  could  obtain 
from  the  Whigs  some  substantial  concession  to  Ireland, 
he  might  still  terminate  his  career  in  the  sunshine  of 
success,  and  if  he  could  leave  the  Irish  populace  as  well 
disposed  to  an  English  Government  as  it  had  been  to 
the  Government  of  Lord  Melbourne,  the  dangers  of 
impend    ig  revolution  might  be  averted. 

^  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  307-309.  to  be  effected  by  endowing  the 

'  Walpole's  Idfe  of  Russell,  priesthood. 
i.  395-396.  ^  See  a  note  by  Fitzpatrick, 

'  Qreville,  v.  234.    This  was  ii.  309,  310. 


THE   YOUNG  IRELAND  POLICY  311 

This  policy  beyond  all  others  was  dreaded  by  the 
Young  Irelanders.  As  O'Connell  drew  back,  they 
pressed  on  with  more  uncompromising  vehemence. 
They  treated  the  suspension  of  the  agitation  during 
the  years  that  followed  1834  as  a  crime,  and  they 
pointed  out  indignantly  how  many  who  had  followed 
O'Connell  at  that  time  had  accepted  ofiSce  under  the 
Crown.  Sir  James  Graham,  in  a  speech  which  he 
made  in  1841,  mentioned  that  out  of  the  forty  members 
(including  tellers)  who  supported  O'ConnelFs  repeal 
motion  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1834,  and  who 
might  have  been  regarded  as  the  most  uncompromising 
opponents  of  English  parties,  no  less  than  seven  had 
since  then  accepted  lucrative  offices,  while  the  leader 
himself  had  been  offered  high  position  under  the  Crown. ^ 
This,  according  to  the  Young  Irelanders,  was  the 
canker  which  was  fatally  corroding  the  repeal  party. 
They  urged  that  the  true  policy  of  that  party  should 
be  to  keep  itself  absolutely  independent  of  English 
parties,  or  at  least  only  to  enter  into  temporary  alliances 
for  purely  Irish  purposes;  they  desired  an  Irish  party 
which  should  sit  in  the  British  House  of  Commons  not 
for  the  purpose  of  supporting,  but  rather  of  opposing 
the  interests  of  the  Empire,  of  dislocating  or  obstruct- 
ing the  whole  machine  in  the  interests  of  their  Irish 
policy.^  Above  all,  they  insisted  that  every  repeal 
member  should  solemnly  bind  himself  to  accept  no 
office  of  emolument  uuder  the  Crown. 

O'Connell  replied  that  he  had  spent  many  of  the 
best  years  of  his  life  in  removing  the  disqualifications 
which  shut  out  Catholics  from  Parliament  and  from 
office,  and  that  he  certainly  was  not  going  to  impose  a 

*  Annual  Register,  1841,  p.       policy  Duffy's  Four  Years  of 
41.  Irish  History,  pp.  65,  68,  435, 

'  See  on  the  growth  of  this      436,  485-488. 


312      LEADERS   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

new  disqualification  excluding  those  who  agreed  with 
him  from  all  places  of  emolument  and  influence  in  the 
administration  of  their  country.  The  more  offices,  he 
said,  were  held  by  such  men  the  better  it  would  be  for 
Ireland  and  for  her  cause.  He  expressed  some  regret 
at  the  secession  of  the  Young  Irelanders  from  the  Ee- 
peal  Association,  and  consented  to  receive  a  deputation 
with  a  view  to  reconciliation.  Three  prominent  Young 
Irelanders  accordingly  visited  him,  supported,  as  they 
said,  by  letters  from  forty  districts  where  secessions  had 
taken  place,  and  by  instructions  from  more  than  one 
Y'oung  Ireland  meeting,  and  with  a  long  series  of  con- 
ditions on  which  they  were  willing  to  return.  Their 
language  was  that  of  men  dictating  terms  to  a  van- 
quished opponent.  If  they  imagined  that  such  a  tone 
would  succeed  with  O'Connell,  even  in  his  failing  state, 
they  were  grossly  deceived.  He  listened  to  them  for  a 
time  in  patience,  and  then  with  a  fierce  flash  of  indig- 
nation dismissed  them  from  his  presence.  There  must, 
he  said,  now  be  an  utter  end  of  these  negotiations. 
The  Association  will  pursue  its  own  path  in  total  dis- 
resfard  of  the  machinations  and  movements  of  the  Little 
Ireland  gang.  *  I  set  them  at  defiance.  Let  them 
keep  up  as  many  dissensions  as  they  please,  I  shall  still 
disregard  them I  would  rather  see  the  Asso- 
ciation emptied  to  the  last  man  than  submit  to  their 
dictation.'  ^ 

In  the  meantime  the  Government  of  Peel,  which 
seemed  but  a  short  time  before  so  overwhelming  in  its 
strength,  had  fallen  on  the  question  of  the  Corn  Laws. 
In  December  1845  Peel  resigned,  and  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell was  called  to  power.  He  could  only  command  the 
support  of  a  minority  in  the  House  of  Commons,  but 


'  Duffy's  Life,  i.  193. 


FALL  OF  PEEL'S  MINISTRY  313 

O'Connell  lost  no  time  in  giving  him  the  most  effica- 
cious assistance  by  a  speech  in  which  he  clearly  inti- 
mated that  the  Irish  repeal  members  were  prepared  to 
support  him.  Nothing,  he  said,  but  repeal  would  ulti- 
mately cure  the  evils  of  Ireland,  but  if  Lord  John 
Eussell  would  bring  in  some  measure  for  the  benefit  of 
Ireland — such  as  advancing  money  to  construct  rail- 
ways on  which  the  people  could  be  employed,  improv- 
ing the  tenure  of  land,  and  restoring  the  magistrates 
dismissed  by  Peel — he  would  have  the  cordial  support 
of  the  Irish  members.  If  these  things  were  done, 
O'Connell  said.  Lord  John  would  become  so  popular 
that  he  would  have  '  to  transfer  his  green  cap  to 
him.' 

The  attempt  to  form  a  Whig  ministry  at  this  time 
failed,  owing  partly  to  the  refusal  of  Lord  Grey  to  serve 
in  a  Cabinet  in  which  Lord  Palmerston  was  Foreign 
Secretary,  and  partly  to  the  attitude  of  Peel  who  de- 
clined to  promise  any  cordial  support.  Peel  came  back 
for  a  few  months  to  office,  and  to  the  profound  injury 
of  English  party  government  himself  carried  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws  which  he  had  so  long  and  so  strenu- 
ously opposed.  O'ConnelPs  speech  had,  however, 
clearly  defined  his  policy  towards  the  Whigs  and  placed 
him  in  violent  opposition  to  the  advanced  party  in  Ire- 
land. After  a  short  respite  of  about  six  months  the 
Government  of  Peel  fell  in  June  1846,  and  it  is  a  sig- 
nificant fact  that  it  fell  ostensibly  on  an  Irish  question. 
The  general  failure  of  the  potato  crop  in  the  late 
autumn  of  1815  was  soon  followed  by  an  appalling 
famine,  and  in  the  scenes  of  misery  that  ensued  it  is 
not  surprising  that  agrarian  crime,  which  was  always 
smouldering  in  the  country,  should  have  burst  out 
anew.  Murders,  incendiary  fires,  and  all  the  accus- 
tomed forms  of  agrarian  crime  multiplied  with  frightful 


314      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


rapidity/  and  a  new  Crimes  Bill  of  extreme  but  perhaps 
not  unnecessary  severity  was  introduced.  O'Connell 
violently  opposed  it,  contending  that  a  law  of  fixity  of 
tenure  and  a  repeal  of  recent  statutes  facilitating  ejec- 
tion should  first  be  carried.  The  measure,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  was  soon  made  the  platform  of  a  party 
conflict.  The  Whigs,  combining  with  the  followers  of 
O'Connell  and  with  the  Tories  who  had  seceded  under 
Disraeli  on  the  Corn  Law  question,  threw  out  the  Bill, 
drove  Peel  from  power,  and  placed  Lord  John  Kussell 
once  more  in  office. 

This  was  probably,  in  truth,  a  misfortune  to  Ire- 
land, for  the  most  ghastly  page  of  modern  Irish  history 
had  now  opened.  A  change  of  ministry  in  the  midst 
of  a  gigantic  famine  is  seldom  a  benefit,  and  however 
great  may  have  been  the  political  shortcomings  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  however  tardy  and  inadequate  may  have 
been  the  measures  with  which  he  combated  the  famine 
in  its  earlier  stages,  he  was  at  least  intimately  ac- 
quainted with  the  country,  and  far  superior  in  admin- 
istrative capacity  to  the  men  who  succeeded  him.  It 
is  difficult  to  believe  that  if  he  had  continued  in  office 
some  at  least  of  the  mistakes  of  the  two  appalling  years 
that  were  to  follow  would  not  have  been  avoided. 

The  problem  to  be  dealt  with,  indeed,  was  one  of 
the  most  terrible  English  statesmen  had  ever  to  encoun- 


^  '  In  the  course  of  that 
autumn  [1845]  ten  counties  of 
Ireland  were  in  a  state  of 
anarchy;  and  mainly  in  that 
period  there  were  136  homi- 
cides committed,  138  houses 
burned,  483  houses  attacked, 
and  138  fired  into ;  there  were 
544  cases  of  aggravated  assault 
and  551  of  robbery  of  arms; 
there  were  89  cases  of  bands 


appearing  in  arms ;  there  were 
more  than  200  cases  of  admin- 
istering unlawful  oaths,  and 
there  were  1,944  cases  of  send- 
ing threatening  letters.  By 
the  end  of  the  year  the  general 
crimes  of  Ireland  had  doubled 
in  amount  and  enormity  com- 
pared with  the  preceding  year.' 
Disraeli's  Life  of  Lord  George 
Bentinck,  p.  136. 


THE   GREAT   FAMINE  315 

ter.  It  was  to  deal  with  what  Lord  John  Russell  truly 
called  a  thirteenth  century  famine  in  a  nineteenth  cen- 
tury population.  The  sole  food  on  which  vast  masses  of 
the  people  lived  had  failed,  and  before  the  year  1845  had 
closed,  or  at  least  in  the  earlier  months  of  the  ensuing 
year,  there  was  literal  starvation  in  countless  cabins. 
Ireland  had  then  a  population  considerably  exceeding 
eight  millions;  living  almost  entirely  on  the  soil  and 
for  the  most  part  on  the  barest  necessaries  of  life,  and 
even  in  normal  times  there  were  months  of  the  year  in 
which  it  was  only  with  great  difficulty  that  multitudes 
of  them  could  procure  those  necessaries.  Their  farms 
were  so  small  that  in  an  immense  proportion  of  cases 
they  were  insufficient  to  furnish  them  with  food  for  the 
year;  there  was  very  little  independent  agricultural 
labour,  and  that  little  was  largely  paid  not  in  money 
but  in  kind.  The  result  was  that  cottiers  and  labourers 
had  no  money  to  buy  food  if  it  was  brought  into  their 
neighbourhood;  they  were  almost  wholly  without  enter- 
prise and  industrial  qualities;  they  lived  in  a  poor 
country,  nearly  destitute  in  three  provinces  of  manu- 
facturing industry;  a  great  part  of  the  wealthier  land- 
lords were  habitual  absentees,  and  most  of  the  resident 
landlords  were  already  plunged  in  debt  and  were  soon 
crushed  to  the  very  dust  by  the  overwhelming  pressure 
of  the  new  poor  law.  Time  was  pressing,  for  the  old 
potatoes  were  rapidly  coming  to  an  end,  and  most  of 
the  later  crop  was  hopelessly  diseased. 

Almost  the  only  redeeming  circumstance  was  that 
the  corn  crops,  and  especially  the  oats,  had  been  un- 
usually abundant.  The  Irish  Parliament  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  had  more  than  once  in  times  of  distress 
prohibited  the  export  of  corn,  and  the  same  course  had 
been  frequently  taken  on  the  Continent.  ^    It  was  loudly 

'  See  Peel's  Memoirs,  ii.  188,  189. 


316      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

called  for  in  Ireland,  but  it  was  one  which  no  English 
minister  was  likely  to  propose,  and  no  British  Parlia- 
ment to  accept.  Distress,  though  not  amounting  to 
absolute  famine,  was  very  severe  in  many  parts  of  Great 
Britain,  and  the  corn  trade  from  Ireland  could  not  be 
dispensed  with.  *I  have  no  confidence,'  wrote  Peel, 
*  in  such  remedies  as  the  prohibition  of  exports  or  the 
stoppage  of  distilleries.  The  removal  of  the  impedi- 
ments to  import  is  the  only  effectual  remedy.'  It  was 
unfortunately  determined,  after  long  hesitation  and 
much  division  of  opinion,  that  this  remedy  should  not 
be  applied  at  once  by  a  royal  proclamation  followed  by 
an  Act  of  Indemnity,  but  by  a  regular  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  this  involved  a  long  struggle  which  was  not 
completed  till  the  June  of  1846,  some  eight  months 
after  the  famine  had  begun.  Under  the  Indian  system 
of  administration  famines  of  a  still  more  gigantic  mag- 
nitude had  been  often  admirably  combated  by  skilled 
administrators,  but  Ireland  was  ruled  under  the  con- 
ditions of  party  and  parliamentary  governments,  and 
very  few  administrators  of  the  Indian  type  were  to  be 
found.  The  long  deferred  opening  of  the  ports  no 
doubt  brought  some  relief  to  Ireland,  but  there  were 
bitter  complaints  that  by  destroying  the  corn  trade  to 
England  free  trade  deprived  her  of  one  of  her  chief 
permanent  sources  of  wealth;  nor  have  the  political 
economists  ever  succeeded  in  convincing  the  Irish  peo- 
ple that  it  was  a  right  thing  that  whole  fleets  laden 
with  food  should  have  been  suffered  to  sail  to  England 
from  the  Irish  coast  at  a  time  when  the  Irish  people 
were  in  the  throes  of  famine. 

O'Connell  early  realised  that  the  calamity  which 
was  impending  was  something  much  graver  than  the 
partial  failure  of  the  potatoes  which  so  often  occurs  in 
Ireland.     On  October  28,  1845,  he  brought  the  matter 


PLANS  OF  RELIEF  317 

before  the  Dublin  Corporation  and  stated  his  plans. 
He  did  not  ask  that  the  export  of  corn  to  England 
should  be  stopped,  but  he  contended  that  it  should  not 
be  allowed  to  foreign  countries;  that  distillation  and 
brewing  should  be  prohibited  till  the  famine  had  dis- 
appeared; that  the  ports  should  be  thrown  open  and 
rice  and  Indian  corn  largely  imported  from  the  col- 
onies, 'and  that  in  each  county  machinery  should  be 
established  for  carrying  out  relief.  Large  sums  would 
be  required  to  meet  the  emergency,  and  they  should  be 
raised  by  a  tax  of  50,  or,  as  he  afterwards  said,  20  per 
cent,  on  the  rental  of  absentee,  and  of  10  per  cent,  on 
those  of  resident  proprietors,  and  by  a  loan  of  a  million 
and  a  half  raised  on  the  security  of  the  Irish  woods  and 
forests.  He  urged  also  that  the  railways  and  any  other 
public  works  of  real  utility  that  had  been  projected  and 
authorised  by  Acts  of  Parliament  should  be  pressed  on 
as  quickly  as  possible  in  order  to  give  employment  to 
the  people.' 

These  views  were  brought  before  Lord  Heytesbury, 
the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  Peel's  Government,  by  a  depu- 
tation of  which  O'Connell,  the  Duke  of  Leinster,  Lord 
Cloncurry  and  the  Lord  Mayor  formed  part,  but  they 
received  only  a  formal  and  dilatory  reply.  Much  time 
was  wasted  in  a  further  inquiry  by  two  English  experts 
which  led  to  no  practical  result,  and  most  of  the  pro- 
posed remedies  were  put  aside.  Sir  Robert  Peel  relied 
mainly  on  his  own  great  scheme  of  abolishing  the  Corn 
Laws  and  thus  opening  the  Irish  ports  to  the  free  im- 
portation of  corn,  but  he  also  carried  some  other  mea- 
sures of  real  though  certainly  very  inadequate  relief. 
100,000?.  was  expended  in  bringing  Indian  corn  from 
America,  and  a  relief  commission  was  created  which 


*  O'Rourke's  History  of  the  Irish  Famine,  pp.  53-55. 


318      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

established  depots  of  food  in  many  parts  of  the  coun- 
try. A  public  works  Bill  was  carried,  and  additional 
powers  were  granted  to  the  grand  juries  to  raise  money 
for  employing  the  destitute.  About  half  a  million  was 
advanced  from  the  Imperial  exchequer  for  these  pur- 
poses, half  of  it  being  a  free  grant,  and  the  other  half 
a  loan.  The  fever  which  already  followed  the  famine 
was  met  by  the  establishment  of  fever  hospitals  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  workhouses,  and  a  few  other 
minor  measures  were  taken.  It  was  computed  that  up 
to  August  1846  the  Government  had  expended  on  relief 
in  Ireland  733,372/.,  of  which  368,000/.  was  in  loans 
and  the  remainder  in  free  grants,  and  that  in  this 
month  97,000  persons  were  employed  in  Ireland  on 
public  works.' 

Before  this  time,  however,  the  responsibility  of 
afEairs  had  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  Peel,  who  had 
announced  in  the  Commons  his  resignation  on  June 
27.  By  a  striking  coincidence  his  defeat  in  the  Com- 
mons took  place  on  the  same  night  on  which  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws  had  been  carried  in  the  Lords. 

0' Council  had  been  longing  for  the  Whig  triumph, 
and  he  at  once  gave  his  full  support  to  the  new  min- 
istry. Four  Irish  members  had  taken  office  under  it, 
including  Shell,  the  most  brilliant  orator,  and  Wyse, 
who  was  one  of  the  most  useful  and  respected  among 
the  Irish  representatives.  It  was  the  first  object  of  the 
Young  Irelanders  to  drive  these  men  out  of  Irish  poli- 
tics, and  they  specially  concentrated  their  efforts  in 
hostility  to  Shell,  who  held  an  insecure  seat  at  Dungar- 
van.  They  had  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  O'Connell 
was  bound  by  his  earlier  language  to  do  so,  but  he  never 


*  See  Trevelyan's  Irish  Crisis  ;  O'Rourke's  History  of  the  Irish 
Famine;  W.  P.  O'Brien's  The  Great  Famine. 


O'CONNELL  SUPPORTS  THE  GOVERNMENT       319 

suffered  himself  to  be  greatly  embarrassed  by  past  utter- 
ances, and,  without  withdrawing  anything  he  had  said, 
he  contrived  by  calculated  delays  and  adroit  manage- 
ment to  prevent  any  opposition,  and  Shell  was  returned 
without  a  contest.  In  a  speech  in  the  Conciliation  Hall 
O'Connell  proclaimed  his  adhesion  to  his  old  policy. 
He  was  still  a  repealer;  he  would  never  be  content  till 
rejoeal  and  complete  equality  were  granted  to  the  Irish 
people.  ^  Repeal  and  no  compromise '  was  now,  as 
formerly,  his  policyo  He  was  determined  to  bring  re- 
peal very  speedily  before  Parliament.  But,  having  said 
all  this  to  persuade  his  audience  of  his  consistency,  he 
proceeded  to  warn  them  against  vexatious  and  useless 
opposition  to  the  Government,  and  he  detailed  no  less 
than  eleven  measures  for  alleviating  the  state  of  Ire- 
land, which,  he  believed,  the  Whig  Government  would 
look  upon  with  favour,  and  which  he  desired  to  see  car- 
ried before  the  repeal  question  was  revived.  These 
measures,  which  would  give  ample  employment  to  a 
long  ministry,  included  an  extension  of  the  franchise, 
an  increase  of  the  Irish  representation,  the  substitution 
of  elective  bodies  for  the  grand  juries,  and  a  heavy  ab- 
sentee tax.  It  was  probably  partly  in  order  to  drive  all 
opposition  out  of  the  Repeal  Association  that  he  at  this 
time  pressed  on  so  vehemently  the  peace  resolutions  and 
forced  the  Young  Ireland ers  to  secede.  He  assured 
the  Government,  as  Greville  tells  us,  that  as  they  had 
assisted  him  to  reject  the  Coercion  Bill  of  Peel,  he 
would  give  them  any  assistance  he  could  in  repressing 
outrage  and  restoring  peace;  and  Greville  adds:  *  He 
carries  the  priests  entirely  with  him,  who  appear  to 
have  all  determined  against  the  violent  party ' — that  is, 
the  party  of  the  Young  Irelanders. 

In  his  private  letters  he  made  no  kind  of  secret  of 
his  alliance  with  the  Government,  and  showed  all  his 


320      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

old  keen  interest  in  the  bestowal  of  patronage.  He 
congratulated  himself  that  he  had  succeeded  in  *  stifling 
all  opposition  to  Sheil  at  Dungarvan/  He  is  delighted 
that  Wyse  and  the  O'Conor  Don  and  O'Ferrall  are  in 
ofiBce.  He,  on  the  whole,  approves  of  the  appointment 
of  Redington  as  Under-Secretary  for  Ireland.  He  had 
been  *  working  in  an  under-channel  for  Monahan,'  the 
new  Attorney-General.  He  suggested  several  other 
legal  appointments;  his  son  Morgan  obtained  a  place  of 
1,200?.  a  year;  one  of  his  sons-in-law  was  made  resident 
magistrate,  and  the  repeal  magistrates  who  had  been 
dismissed  in  the  last  administration  wxre  restored.  *  I 
have  difficulties  enough  to  encounter,'  he  said,  *  to  keep 
the  repeal  party  within  bounds. '  He  would  not  hesi- 
tate *  to  place  the  question  of  the  Protestant  Church  in 
abeyance,  but  then  something  must  be  done  respecting 
education  and  touching  the  '^infidel"  colleges  before 
Parliament  rises. '  ^ 

The  Young  Irelanders  were  certainly  not  far  astray 
when  they  contended  that  all  the  promises  of  independ- 
ent opposition  and  inexorable  devotion  to  the  repeal 
policy  which  were  made  in  the  palmy  days  of  the  Peel 
Ministry  were  vanishing  into  thin  air.  But  without 
O'Connell  and  the  priests  they  could  do  nothing,  and 
in  spite  of  the  eloquent  writings  in  the  '  Nation '  they 
were  reduced  to  mere  impotent  rage.  Political  wran- 
gles seemed,  indeed,  a  hideous  mockery  in  the  midst 
of  the  great  and  overwhelming  calamity  of  the  famine. 
The  potato  crop  had  again  failed,  and  the  failure  was 
both  earlier  and  more  complete  than  in  the  previous 
year,  while  at  the  same  time  the  corn  harvest  was  far 
below  that  of  1845.  In  July  the  prospect  of  the  pota- 
toes seemed  very  flourishing,  but   the   first  week  of 


^  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  375-380 ;  Duffy's  Four  Years  of  Irish  History. 


O'CONNELL  ON  THE  FAMINE  321 

August  had  scarcely  passed  before  nearly  the  whole 
crop  was  irretrievably  blighted.  During  the  last  half 
of  1846  the  famine  and  the  deadly  fever  that  accom- 
panied it  were  at  their  height,  and  the  death  wail  that 
arose  from  Ireland  continued  with  but  little  abatement 
through  the  whole  succeeding  year. 

With  the  history  of  this  most  awful  period  I  am  not 
here  concerned,  except  so  far  as  it  bears  on  the  last  sad 
months  of  O'Connell's  life.  Familiar  as  he  was  with 
one  of  the  poorest  parts  of  Ireland,  he  was  pierced  to 
the  heart  by  the  misery  around  him,  and  he  did  all  in 
his  power  to  alleviate  it.  In  his  own  county  he  was 
indefatigable  in  obtaining  grand  jury  presentments  and 
setting  up  public  works  for  the  employment  of  the 
starving  poor,  and  he  warned  the  Government  that 
there  was  no  exaggeration  in  the  accounts  of  the  failure 
of  the  potato  and  that  the  great  task  of  feeding  a  nation 
must  be  undertaken  without  delay.  He  complained 
bitterly  of  the  delays  in  carrying  out  the  Government 
measures  when  the  people  were  starving  by  thousands, 
and  he  urged,  with  much  good  sense,  that  not  less  than 
a  million  should  be  at  once  placed  under  the  control  of 
the  Lord  Lieutenant,  to  be  employed  at  his  discretion 
without  the  necessit^^  of  referring  on  each  occasion  to 
England.' 

A  few  fragments  from  his  letters  give  the  best  and 
truest  picture  of  his  feelings.  '  It  would  be  the  ab- 
surdest  of  all  absurd  things,'  he  wrote  to  his  friend 
Fitzpatrick,  ^  to  think  of  a  tribute  in  such  times  as 
these.  They  are,  indeed,  more  awful  than  you  have 
any  notion  of.  All  our  thoughts  are  engrossed  with 
the  two  topics — endeavouring  to  keep  the  people  from 
outbreaks  and  endeavouring  to  get  food  for  them.     ^lay 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  383-387. 

VOL.  II  21 


322       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

the  great  God  in  His  infinite  mercy  mitigate  the  calam- 
ity and  avert  the  danger.'  *A  nation/ he  wrote  in 
December,  *  is  starving.  If  there  be  any  exceptions, 
they  are  so  few  that  they  are  not  worth  mentioning. 
To  the  all-prevalent  famine  is  now  superadded  dysen- 
tery and  typhus  in  their  worst  shape.'  His  own  strength 
was  rapidly  failing,  yet  he  went  over  to  London  in  Feb- 
ruary 1847,  to  plead  the  case  of  Ireland  before  Parlia- 
ment; but  the  impressions  he  formed  there  were  of  the 
gloomiest  kind.  *  The  prospect  of  substantial  and  com- 
prehensive relief  from  Parliament  is,  in  my  judgment, 
daily  diminishing.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  great  deal 
of  sympathy  and  good  feeling  both  in  and  out  of  the 
House,  and  generally  a  very  sincere  desire  that  some- 
thing efficient  should  be  done  to  relieve  the  horrible 
sufferings  of  the  people  of  Ireland;  but  there  are  also 
many  obstacles,  and  an  unwillingness  to  place  upon  the 
British  people  the  burdens  absolutely  necessary  to  give 
efficient  relief.  .  .  .  There  is  abundant  individual 
humanity  and  charity.  The  noblest  generosity  ig 
evinced  by  multitudes  of  the  English.  ...  I  am 
afraid  of  not  finding  words  sufficient  to  express  my 
strong  and  lively  sense  of  English  humanity.  If  the 
exhibition  of  these  qualities  by  individuals  could  save 
Ireland  in  her  present  misery,  we  should  be  saved. 
But  there  is  ...  .  but  little  prospect  of  substantial 
relief  on  that  enormously  large  scale  which  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  prevent  hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  Irish 
people  from  perishing  of  famine  and  pestilence.  The 
Government  measures,  as  far  as  they  go,  are  good,  and 
their  intention  to  relieve  by  those  measures  is  appar- 
ent; but  the  measures  themselves  are  not  of  half-suffi- 
cient magnitude.'  *  The  people  of  Ireland  are  perishing 
in  shoals;  they  are  perishing  by  the  most  frightful 
species  of  death.     If  individual  generosity  could  save  a 


O'CONNELL'S   LAST   DATS  323 

nation,  British  generosity  would  do  so  now;  but  it  is 
impossible  without  the  bountiful  hand  of  Parliament, 
and  the  disposition  to  the  bounty  of  the  Parliament, 
appears  to  be  extremely  limited.'  Lord  George  Ben- 
ti nek's  scheme  for  spending  sixteen  millions  on  Irish 
railways,  though  emanating  from  the  Opposition,  and 
liable,  as  he  confessed,  to  serious  objections,  seemed  to 
O'Connell  the  best  that  was  proposed.^  It  was  proba- 
bly that  which  would  have  done  most  permanent  good 
to  Ireland,  though  the  difficulty  of  making  it  largely 
available  for  the  immediate  and  pressing  necessity 
would  have  been  very  great. 

Disraeli  has  given  a  striking  and  touching  picture 
of  O'Connell  as  he  appeared  for  the  last  time  in  the 
House  of  Commons — an  old,  feeble,  broken-hearted 
man,  murmuring  amid  the  deep  silence  of  the  House 
a  few  pathetic  words  which  were  only  audible  to  those 
who  were  near  him:  ^  Ireland  is  in  your  hands,  in  your 
power.  If  you  do  not  save  her  she  cannot  save  herself. 
I  solemnly  call  on  you  to  recollect  that  I  ]oredict  with 
the  sincerest  conviction  that  a  quarter  of  her  popula- 
tion will  perish  unless  you  come  to  her  relief.'  *  The 
hand  of  death  was  upon  him,  and  the  change  that  had 
passed  over  him  impressed  all  who  saw  him.  In  Eng- 
land, at  least,  old  rancour  and  party  spirit  were  forgot- 
ten at  the  spectacle  of  so  great  a  sorrow.  He  was  lis- 
tened to  with  an  almost  reverential  silence,  and  followed 
by  many  evidences  of  pity  and  of  respect.  Statesmen 
of  all  parties  testified  their  s^ympathy  by  their  inquiries. 
Lord  Shrewsbury,  whom  he  had  once  so  violently 
abused,  was  indefatigable  in  his  kindness,  and  it  is 
worthy  of  notice  that  among  the  shamrocks  that  were 
sent  him  on  his  last  St.  Patrick's  Day  was  one  from  a 


*  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  '  Cusack,  ii.  212. 


324       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

leading  member  of  the  great  Protestant  house  of  Beres- 
ford.  Some  of  the  fiercest  conflicts  of  his  early  life  had 
been  with  that  house,  yet  in  spite  of  all  this  there  had 
been  friendly  relations  between  them  which  were 
equally  creditable  to  both  parties.  The  Queen,  with  a 
graceful  kindness  that  should  never  be  forgotten,  sent 
to  ask  after  the  dying  agitator.  Another  visit  he  re- 
ceived in  those  last  dark  days  which  he  may  have  valued 
still  more — three  of  tlie  Oxford  converts  to  Eome  came 
to  assure  him  that  it  was  his  career  that  had  first 
directed  their  attention  to  the  theology  of  his  Church. 
Religion  was  indeed  now  the  only  solace  of  his 
mind.  Frederick  Lucas,  who  disliked  him  and  who 
was  sceptical  about  the  gravity  of  his  illness,  wrote  at 
this  time  to  John  O'Hagan,  'I  have  seen  O'Connell. 
He  is  really  ill  and  supposes  himself  io  be  gradually 
breaking  up.  He  attends  to  politics  no  more  than  is 
absolutely  necessary,  and  spends  every  vacant  moment 
in  prayer  and  spiritual  reading.' '  Dr.  Miley,  an  ex- 
cellent Catholic  priest  who  was  sincerely  devoted  to 
him,  and  who  was  his  chief  comfort  in  his  last  days, 
fully  corroborated  the  picture:  ^  Prayer,' he  said,  *  is 
his  only  occupation.  It  is  at  once  most  edifying  and 
affecting  to  witness  his  demeanour  in  this  respect,  not 
alone  by  day  but  by  night  also.  He  is  perfectly  pre- 
pared for  death,  and  had  rather  not  be  diverted  from 
the  thought  of  it.'  His  physicians  having  ordered  him 
abroad,  he  resolved  to  draw  his  last  breath  near  the 
tombs  of  the  Apostles  in  that  great  city  which  is  the 
metropolis  of  his  Church.  The  deep  melancholy  which 
had  fallen  upon  him  attended  him  on  that  dreary  jour- 
ney. '  He  seemed,'  said  one  who  visited  him  in  France, 
*  to  be  a  continued  prey  to  sad  reflections.     His  face 


^  Duffy's  Life,  i.  208. 


DEATH   AND   BURIAL  325 

had  grown  thin,  and  his  look  proclaimed  an  inexpress- 
ible sadness:  the  head  hung  upon  the  breast,  and  the 
entire  person  of  the  invalid,  formerly  so  imposing,  was 
greatly  weighed  down.' 

It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  awful  tragedies  in 
Ireland  contributed  largely  to  this  melancholy,  5^et  it 
would  appear  from  the  letters  of  Dr.  Miley  as  if  in  his 
last  days  all  thoughts  of  Ireland  and  of  public  affairs 
had  vanished  from  his  mind.  In  this  respect  0' Con- 
nellys closing  scene  is  a  great  contrast  to  that  of  Grat- 
tan.  *By  day  and  by  night,'  wrote  Miley,  "^  nothing 
will  he  ever  hear  or  speak  or  think  of  for  a  moment 
but  his  own  maladies  and  misfortunes.'  The  Church 
was  now  to  him  all  in  all.  He  could  scarcely  bear  to 
lose  sight  of  a  priest:  *  Since  his  illness  commenced  his 
thoughts  have  been  entirely  absorbed  by  religion  ' ;  his 
mental  agitations  vv^ere  terrible  to  witness,  and  he  fol- 
lowed the  rites  of  his  faith  with  a  trembling  but  most 
passionate  fervour.'  His  strength  failed  him  when  he 
arrived  at  Genoa,  and  in  that  city  he  expired  on  May 
15,  1847. 

He  bequeathed  his  body  to  Ireland  and  his  heart  to 
the  Eternal  City.  The  former  rests  in  the  cemetery 
of  Glasnevin,  in  the  vicinity  of  Dublin;  the  latter  near 
the  tomb  of  Lascaris,  in  the  Church  of  St.  Agatha,  at 
Rome. 

There  is  something  almost  awful  in  so  dark  a  close 
of  so  brilliant  a  career.  The  more  I  dwell  upon  the 
subject  the  more  I  am  convinced  of  the  splendour  and 
originality  of  the  genius  and  of  the  reality  of  the  patri- 
otism of  O'Connell,  in  spite  of  the  animosities  that  sur- 
round his  memory  and  the  many  and  grievous  faults 


'  Fitzpatrick,  ii.  413;  Maccabe's  Last  Days  of  O'Connell,  pp. 

87-91. 


326      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 

that  obscured  his  life.  But  when  to  the  great  services 
he  rendered  to  his  country  we  oppose  the  sectarian  and 
class  warfare  that  resulted  from  his  policy,  the  fearful 
elements  of  discord  and  turbulence  he  evoked,  and 
which  he  alone  could  in  some  degree  control,  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  his  life  was  a  blessing  or  a  curse  to 
Ireland. 


INDEX 


Abingdon,  Lord  :  speech  on 
dependence  of  Irish  Parlia- 
ment, i.  66 
Absenteeism :  prevalent  among 
both  Churchmen  and  lay 
landlords,  i.  6  ;  evil  results, 
ib. ;  tax  on  absentees  pro- 
posed in  1773,  and  later  by 
O'Connell,  i.  53  sq.,  ii.  181, 
196 
AoTS  (and  Bills)  :  — 

Act  (1719)  depriving  Irish 
House  of  Lords  of  its  ap- 
pellate jurisdiction,  i.  27 
Act  (1690)  disqualifying 
Catholics  from  sitting  in 
Irish  Parliament,  i.  26 
Acts  in  relief  of  restrictions 

on  Irish  trade,  i.  59 
Arms,    i.    306,   ii.    54,    125, 

255 
Augmentation  of  Irish  Army, 

i.  46  sq. 
Catholic  Emancipation   (re- 
jected, 1795),  i.  215  ;  Grat- 
tan's  (1813),  237,  315  sq.  ; 
(1829),  238  n. 
Charitable  Trust,  ii.  279 
Church     Temporalities,     ii. 

142,  148 
Coercion,  ii.  125,  138 
Convention,  i.  159,  ii.  59 
Corporation   (abolished, 

1828),  ii.  83 
Declaratory  Act,  and  its  re- 
peal (1782),  i.  65  sq. 


Distraint  of  Growing  Crops, 
ii.  50 

Education  (Stanley's,  for 
Ireland,  1831-32),  ii.  128 

Ejectment,  ii.  189 

Encumbered  Estates,  ii.  183, 
195 

Grenville's  Catholic  Bill,  i. 
297 

Habeas  Corpus,  i.  44,  46,  55, 
ii.  54 ;  frequent  suspen- 
sions of,  ii.  102. 

Henry  VII,,  Acts  of,  affect- 
ing Ireland,  i.  26  sq. 

India  Bill,  i.  87 

Insurrection  (1807)  ;  lapsed 
in  1818  ;  revived  in  1822), 
ii.  54,  138  ;  Sir  Arthur 
Welleslev's,  i.  307 

Jamaica  Bill  (1839),  ii.  224 

Militia,  i.  55 

Money  Bills,  i.  27,  47 

Municipal  Reform  (Irish),  ii. 
166,  225 

Mutiny,  i.  27,  63,  104 

National  Debt  (Ireland, 
1751),  i.  30 

Navigation,  i.  7 

Octennial  Parliaments 
(1768),  i.  44,  47 

Peace  Preservation  (1814), 
ii.  54 

Pension  Bills,  i.  130 

Pitt's  Commercial  Treaty 
Bill,  i.  123 

Place  Bills,  i.  32,  159,  245 


328      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Poor  Law,  183S,  ii.  172  ; 
amended  in  1843,  175  ;  re- 
laxed in  1847,  175,  182 

Poynings'  Act,  i.  28,  64 

Reform  Bills  :  Flood's  Eng- 
lish, i.  75  sqq.,  84,  90  sq. ; 
W.  Ponsonbv  and  Grat- 
tan's  (1794),  132  ;  United 
Irishmen's,  135  ;  Pitt's 
(1785),  235  ;  Reform  Bill 
of  1832,  ii.  118,  122 

Regency,  i.  128 

Registration  (Stanley's  pro- 
posed Bill),  ii.  225' 

Relief  Bills,  i.  135,  (1702), 
143,  (1793),  148  sq.,  293, 
(1821,  Plunket's)  ii.  42 
5^.,  (1825)  60,  (1827)  82, 
(1828)  ih. 

Renunciatory,  i.  67 

Repeal  of  prohibition  of  ex- 
port of  woollen  and  glass 
manufactures,  i.  62 

Responsibility  Bill  (Grat- 
tan's),  i.  131 

Sacramental  Test  (abol- 
ished), i.  62 

Schism  (English,  1713),  i. 
27 

Septennial  Parliament  (Lu- 
cas's), i.  42 

Settlement,  i.  10,  20,  21,  211 

Supply,  i.  3,  55 

Sub-letting,  ii.  52 

Tenure  of  Judges,  i.  55 

Test  (1704),  i.  9  ;  abolished 
(1828),  ii.  82 

Tithe  Commutation  (1838), 
ii.  109 

Tithe  Composition  (1823),  ii. 
57  (1831  ;  making  com- 
sory  the  optional  Act  of 
1823),  131 

Toleration  (1719),  i.  10 

Union,  i.  234  sqq. 

Vestry,  ii.  102,  109  ;  re- 
pealed, 142 

Whiteboy,  i.  127 


Addington,  Mr.  :  succeeds 
Pitt,"  i.  271  sq. 

Agar,  Archbishop  :  his  share 
in  the  Act  of  Union,  i.  237 

Agrarian  crime  in  Ireland : 
the  causes  of,  ii.  52  sg.,  56, 
135  sq.,  191  sq. 

Agrarian  policy  of  O'Connell, 
ii.  186  sqq. 

Agricultural  produce ;  yiolent 
fluctuation  of  prices  over 
the  British  Isles  after  French 
war,  ii.  45 

Agriculture,  Irish  ;  condition 
in  18th  century,  i.  23  sq.  ; 
food,  labor,  and  manner  of 
life  of  the  people,  •  *&.  ;  im- 
mense tracts  laid  out  in  pas- 
ture, 24 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  the  Peace  of  : 
a  wave  of  prosperity  in  Ire- 
land, i.  30 

Althorp,  Lord  :  leader  of 
House  of  Commons,  ii.  150  ; 
on  the  Irish  Church  surplus 
revenues,  ih. ;  on  the  politi- 
cal clauses  in  Coercion  Act, 
ib. ;, death  of  his  father  :  he 
becomes  Earl  Spencer,  153; 
on  repeal,  254,  255 

America  :  sympathy  with  re- 
peal, ii.  253,  258 

American  War  of  Independ- 
ence :  Irish  troops  sent  to 
fight  against  Americans,  i. 
55  ;  Irish  Presbyterians 
favor  the  Americans,  56  ; 
French  alliance  with  Ameri- 
cans, 57. 

Anglesey,  L  o  r  d,  V  i  c  e  r  o  y  : 
warned  Peel  that  Irish  priests 
were  tampering  with  Catho- 
lic soldiers,  ii.  86  ;  his  sym- 
pathy with  Catholic  cause 
produced  his  recall  (1829), 
ii.  112  ;  reappointed  in  1830: 
endeavors  to  dissuade  O'Con- 
nell    from     agitation,    ih. ; 


INDEX 


329 


Anglesey's  cold  reception  in 
Dublin,  114 ;  puts  down 
O'Connell's  public  breakfasts 
and  prosecutes  him,  ib.;  re- 
tires from  Viceroyalty,  143 

Ant  i-C  o  r  n-L  a  w  L  e  a  g  u  e  : 
formed  on  model  of  Repeal 
Association,  ii.  261 

Armagh  :  R.  C.  Archbishop 
favoured  union,  i.  267;  Cath- 
olics driven,  by  Protestant 
violence,  from  their  houses, 
302 

Army  in  Ireland,  the,  i.  25  ; 
augmentation  desired  by 
England,  44  ;  arguments 
against  it,  45  ;  Government 
concessions,  ih. ;  Bill  de- 
feated, 46  ;  Flood  desired 
(1782)  its  reduction  below 
15,000.  69  ;  placed  under  full 
control  of  Irish  Parliament, 
104 

Army,  British  :  Catholics  al- 
lowed commissions  in,  i.  317 

Athlone  :  proposed  convention 
of  United  Irishmen  at,  i.  159 

Auckland,  Lord  :  hostile  to 
Fitzwilliam,  i.  176 

Aughrim,  battle  of,  ii.  216 

Ball,  Mr.  J.  :  magnanimous 
traits  in  O'Connell's  charac- 
ter, ii.  203 

Bank  of  Ireland  :  O'Connell 
called  it  an  '  Orange  Con- 
federacy,' ii.  220 

Bantry  Bav  :  French  fleet  in, 
i.  2i8 

Bar,  the  Irish  :  opposed  to 
Union,  i.  23;],  ii.  1  ;  formed 
a  yeoman  corps  against  Em- 
met's rebellion,  ii.  3 

'  Baratariana '  :  on,  i.  49;  Grat- 
tan's  character  of  Lord 
Chatham  in,  95 

Barren  lands  :  exempted  from 
tithe,  i.  159 


Barrington,  Sir  Jonah :  his 
description  of  the  Earl  of 
Bristol,  i.  74  ;  high  opinion 
of  Flood,  91 

Beauchamp,  Lord  :  pamphlet 
against  '  Simple  Repeal,'  i.  66 

Bedell,  Bishop  :  humane  treat- 
ment of,  by  Catholic  rebels, 
i.  300 

Bedford,  Duke  of,  Viceroy  of 
Ireland  (1807),  i.  305 

Belfast  :  fears  an  impending 
French  attack  (1778),  i.  58  ; 
O'Connell's  expedition  to 
(1841),  ii.  227,  228 

Bentham,  Jeremy  :  opinion  in 
favour  of  Flood's  reform 
policy,  i.  84  n. 

Bentinck,  Lord  George,  scheme 
for  extending  railways  in 
Ireland,  ii.  323 

Beresford,  John,  Chief  Com- 
missioner of  Revenue  (Ire- 
land) :  dismissed  by  Fitz- 
william, i.  172  ;  power  and 
political  connections  of  the 
Beresford  family,  173  ;  Fitz- 
william's  objections  to  Beres- 
ford, 174,  192  ;  his  interest 
in  patronage  department, 
195  ;  Committee  of  inquiry 
into  charges  against  him, 
198  sq. 

Berkeley,  Bishop :  advocated 
admission  of  Catholics  into 
Dublin  University,  i.  296 

Bishops,  Irish  Catholic  :  terms 
agreed  to  with  Castlereagh 
(1799),  i.  260  ;  right  of  veto 
on  their  appointments,  ih. ; 
dispute  with  Rome  about 
the  veto,  ii.  21  sq. ;  refrac- 
tory to  the  orders  sent  by 
Pius  VII.,  23  ;  ultimately 
carried  their  point,  ih. 

Blackburne,  Mr.,  Attorney- 
General  (England) :  his  anti- 
Catholic  sympathies,  ii.  121 


330      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Blaquiere,  Sir  John,  Chief  Sec- 
retary to  Lord  Harcourt,  i, 
51 

Bodkin,  Dr.  (agent  of  Irish  R. 
C.  Bishops  at  Rome)  :  fav- 
voured  Union,  i.  2G7 

Bolivar,  General,  ii.  64 

Borough  -  owners  :  compensa- 
tion to,  at  the  Union,  i.  235; 
given  irrespective  of  politics, 
ih. 

Borough  system  (Ireland)  : 
growth  of  political  influence 
of  landlords,  i.  29  ;  rise  in 
the  price  of  boroughs,  31; 
the  undertakers,  32 

Boulter,  Primate  :  his  scheme 
of  'Charter  Schools,' i.  17, 18; 
his  despotic  influence,  i.  27  ; 
complaint  of  the  growth  of 
atheism,  profanity  and  im- 
morality, 298  n. 

Bounties :  granted  to  encourage 
tillage,  manufactures,  &c.,  i. 
32  ;  on  export  of  Irish  corn 
to  foreign  countries,  55 

Bowes,  Chancellor,  i.  4G 

Bovcotting  in  use  in  Ireland 
in  1826,  ii.  77;  in  1831,  134 

Boyle  (afterwards  first  Lord 
Shannon) :  Speaker  of  Irish 
House  of  Commons,  i.  30  ; 
his  opposition  to  Primate 
Stone,  ih. ;  bought  by  a 
peerage,  32 

Bridgewater,  Duke  of,  i.  286. 

Brindley :  his  invention  of 
canals  with  locks,  i.  286 

Bristol,  Earl  of  (Bishop  of 
Derry)  :  his  desire  for  war 
between  Ireland  and  Eng- 
land, i.  73 :  his  extrava- 
gances, 74  ;  aspired  to  lead 
the  Volunteers,  ih.,  79  ;  pos- 
sibilities of  rebellion  if  he 
had  succeeded,  79  ;  he  de- 
sired to  give  political  power 
to  Catholics,  ih. ;  favoured  (in 


1799)  a  Legislative  Union, 
83  ;  his  last  years  and  death, 
ih. 

Bristol,  Lord,  Viceroy  under 
Lord  Chatham,  i.  51 

Brooks's  (Club) :  O'Connell  a 
member,  ii.  215 

Brougham,  Lord :  praise  of 
Curran's  defence  of  Rowan, 
i.  223  ;  condemned  O'Con- 
nell's  obsequiousness  to 
George  IV.,  ii.  40  ;  supports 
verdict  against  O'Connell,  272 

Buckinghamshire,  Earl  of. 
Viceroy  (1776),  i.  57  sqq. 

Bulwer,  Sir  H.  Lytton  :  de- 
scription of  O'Connell's  mon- 
ster meetings,  ii.  246  n. 

Burdett,  Sir  Francis,  had 
charge  of  Catholic  Relief 
Bill  of  1825,  ii.  66 

Burgh,  Ilussey  :  Prime  Ser- 
jeant, i.  61  ;  speech  in  favour 
of  Free  Trade,  ih. ;  resigna- 
tion of  his  oflice,  62 

Burke,  Edmund  :  on  Flood's 
eloquence,  i.  90  ;  on  the 
gra^iting  of  Irish  legislative 
independence,  104 ;  efforts 
on  behalf  of  Irish  Catholics, 
137,  141  ;  on  the  Catholic 
forty-shilling  freeholders, 
152  ;  character  of  Catholic 
gentry,  154  ;  on  reform  of 
Irish  Parliament  and  of  the 
tithe  system,  157;  on  the 
character  of  the  Irish  Oppo- 
sition, 166  ;  patronage  and 
jobbery  of  *  a  certain  family 
cabal  '  in  Ireland,  176  ;  the 
Catholic  question  in  1795, 
178  ;  unfavourable  to  Union, 
229  ;  England's  need  of  the 
co-operation  of  Ireland,  257 

Burke,  Richard  :  on  the  small 
number  of  violent  opponents 
of  Catholics  in  the  House,  i. 
144 


INDEX 


331 


Burrowes,  Peter  :  opinion  of 
Flood's  character,  i.  91  ;  de- 
nunciation of  Union,  i.  248 

Bushe :  denunciation  of  Union, 
1.  248  sq.  ;  character  of  his 
oratory,  ii.  17  ;  epigram  on 
the  prevented  duel  between 
O'Connell  and  Peel,  33  ; 
made  Chief  Justice  (Ireland), 
44 

Butler  (a  leading  English  Ca- 
tholic) :  in  favour  of  the  veto, 
ii.  21 

Butt,  Isaac  :  Irish  Tory  writer, 
ii.  291  ;  afterwards  leader  of 
Home  Rule  movement,  243  ; 
defended  the  Union  against 
O'Connell  in  1834,  ib. 

Byron,  Lord,  i.  88  ;  on  G rat- 
tan's oratory,  i.  97 ;  the 
'  Irish  Avatar,'  i.  97  w,,  ii. 
40  ;  denounced  the  Union, 
i.  253 

Cahirciveex  :  condition  of 
O'Connell's  estate  at,  ii.  198, 
200 

Camden,  Lord:  Viceroy,  i.  206; 
debate  on  Fitzwilliam  case, 
206  sqg.  ;  appreciation  of 
Grattan's  moderation,  213  ; 
instructed  to  oppose  conces- 
sions to  Catholics,  214  ;  es- 
tablishment of  Maynooth, 
216  ;  on  state  of  the  country, 
ib. 

Campbell,  Lord :  always  on 
friendly  terms  with  O'Con- 
nell, ii.^  309 

Canadian  insurrection,  ii.  185 

Canals  and  inland  navigation 
in  Ireland,  i.  286  sq. 

Canning,  George  :  desire  to 
combine  Union  scheme  with 
Catholic  Emancipation,  i. 
256  ;  member  of  Perceval's 
anti-Catholic  ]Ministry,  291  ; 
opinion  that  Catholic  Eman- 


cipation should  be  accom- 
panied by  some  state  con- 
trol, 313 ;  his  clauses  in 
Grattan's  Catholic  Bill 
(1813),  315  ;  succeeds  Lord 
Liverpool  as  head  of  Cab- 
inet, ii.  80  ;  death,  81 

'  Carding  '  (torturing  obnox- 
ious persons),  ii,  54 

Carleton,  Lord,  i.  222 

Carleton,  William,  ii.  291 

Carlisle,  Lord,  i.  177 

Carlyle,  Thomas  :  attraction  of 
young  Irelanders  to,  ii.  289 
sq. 

Caroline,  Queen  :  her  death, 
ii.  40 

Cashel,  R.  C.  Archbishop  fa- 
voured Union,  i.  2G7 

Castlereagh,  Lord,  Secretary  to 
Cornwallis  :  on  the  incor- 
poration of  Irish  Church 
with  that  of  England,  i.  236; 
deprecates  undue  haste  in 
pushing  the  Union,  245 ; 
happy  phrase  in  description 
of  corruption,  247 ;  negotia- 
tions with  Irish  Catholic 
Bishops,  259  sq. ;  member  of 
Perceval's  Ministry,  i.  291  ; 
desired  some  State  control  to 
accompany  Catholic  Eman- 
cipation, 313  ;  his  respect 
for  Grattan,  318;  Grattan's 
final  opinion  of  him,  320 

Catholic  Association,  the  old  ; 
founded  (1759),  i.  138 

Catholic  Association  :  (1806), 
ii.  27  5^'. ;  was  declared  il- 
legal (1811),  31  ;  revival  in 
1823,  ii.  59  sq. ;  suppressed 
(1825)  :  its  farewell  address, 
73  ;  new  association  takes  its 
place,  74  sq. 

Catholic  Committee  :  its  ob- 
ject, i.  140  ;  a  schism  and 
great  secession,  141 ;  it  falls 
into  democratic  hands,  ib. ; 


332       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


statements  (1792)  of  what 
Catholics  asked  for,  i.  14-4 
sq.  ;  declaration  of  loyalty, 
145  ;  invitation  of  Catholics 
to  a  Convention,  ib. ;  insist- 
ance  (1795)  on  immediate  re- 
lief from  disabilities,  187  ; 
O'Connell's  commanding 
position  in  (1808),  ii.  19 

Catholic  Convention  :  the  elec- 
tion of  delegates  to,  1.  153 

Catholics,  English  :  mainly  in 
favour  of  the  veto,  ii.  21  ; 
send  a  sympathetic  address 
to  0'(>onnell  in  prison,  ii. 
271 

Chandos,  Duke  of :  transac- 
tions with  Flood,  i.  84,  88 

Charlemont,  Lord :  protest 
against  Flood's  acceptance  of 
office,  i.  54  ;  share  in  Vol- 
unteer movement,  59  ;  on 
Flood's  character,  71 ;  elected 
president  of  Volunteers,  74  ; 
thought  Irish  Catholics  un- 
fitted for  citizens'  rights.  76  ; 
brought  Grattan  into  Parlia- 
ment, 98  ;  co-operation  with 
him  and  Flood,  in  resolu- 
tions asserting  Irish  inde- 
pendence, 102  ;  denounced 
the  notion  of  Union,  228  ; 
believed  that  the  Union 
would  contribute  to  separa- 
tion of  the  two  countries, 
257 

Charter  Schools,  Primate  Boul- 
ter's scheme  of,  i,  17  sq. ; 
proselytising  character,  ii. 
127 

Chartists,  English,  ii.  185,  187 

Chatham,  Lord  :  Grattan's  ad- 
miration of,  i.  95  sq. 

Cholera  epidemic  (1S34),  ii.  199 

Clancartv,  Lord,  tlie  attainder 
of,  i.  20 

Clanricarde,  Lord  :  his  estates 
forfeited,  i.  20  :   member  of 


Catholic   Association   (1823), 
ii.  60 

Clare,  Earl  of.  See  Fitzgib- 
bon. 

Clare  :  the  election  of  1828,  ii. 
83  sq.  ;  O'Connell's  re-elec- 
tion :  *  address  of  the  hun- 
dred promises,'  103 

Clarendon,  Lord;  on  the  mis- 
chievous efi'ects  of  O'Con- 
nell's agitation  after  1829,  ii. 
97  ;  on  the  '  physical  force 
men,'  306 

Clearances.     See  Evictions. 

Cloncurry,  Lord:  on  Grattan's 
advice  about  repeal,  ii.  27; 
member  of  Catholic  Associa- 
tion (1823),  60 

Clontarf :  the  intended  repeal 
meeting  (1843),  ii.  263  ;  pro- 
claimed at  the  last  moment, 
264 

Coalition,  Whig,  1794 :  how  it 
atfected  Ireland,  i.  162  sq. ; 
Lord  Fitzwilliam's  appoint- 
ment as  Viceroy,  163;  his 
Catholic  policv.  168  sqq. 

Cobbett,  W.,  ii."40,  215 

Commercial  disabilities  in  Ire- 
land, i.  2,  7 ;  relaxations 
granted,  55,  60,  104 

Commissions  of  inquiry  into 
state  of  Ireland  :  1824-25,  ii. 
46,51,67 ;  Devon  Commission 
(1845),  ih. 

Compensation  for  improve- 
ments, questions  of,  ii.  194 
sq. 

'Con-acre'  :  its  meaning,  ii. 
172 

Connaught :  in  eighteenth 
centurv  almost  outside  Brit- 
ish law,  i.  26 

Conolly,  i.  155,  239 

Constabulary :  its  reorganisa- 
tion, ii.  2i6 

Constitution,  Irish,  of  1782  : 
points  of  weakness  in  it,  i. 


INDEX 


333 


107  sqq.  ;  opinions  of  Port- 
land, Temple,  nnd  Rutland, 
111 

Cooke,  Dr.  Henry,  leader  of 
Ulster  Presbyterians,  ii,  227 

Cooke  (Under  Secretary,  Ire- 
land) :  on  Grattan's  political 
conduct  in  1793,  i.  161 ;  dis- 
missed by  Fitzwilliam,  172 ; 
compensation,  178  ;  pamph- 
let in  favour  of  Union,  ih. ; 
on  the  status  of  Irish  Church 
under  the  Union,  236 

Cork  :  largely  favoured  Union, 
i.  267  ;  Queen's  College  at, 
ii.  282 

Corn  :  bounty  granted  on  car- 
riage of,  i.  32 

Corn  Laws :  their  abolition 
supported  by  O'Connell,  95 

Cornwallis,  Lord  :  on  the  re- 
ligious war  after  the  Rebel- 
lion, i.  230  ;  his  Viceroyalty: 
purchases  a  majority  for  the 
Union,  i.  241  ;  dislike  of  his 
task,  246 ;  his  disinterested 
character,  254 ;  desire  to 
combine  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion with  Union,  256  :  nego- 
tiations with  Catholics,  258  ; 
his  strong  Catholic  sympa- 
thies, 268  ;  circular  to 
Catholic  leaders  after  Pitt's 
resignation,  273,  274  ;  his 
resignation,  ih. 

Corry,  Lord  :  opposed  Union, 
i.  244 

Corry  (Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer) :  reply  to  Grattan's 
speech  against  Union,  i.  251 ; 
a  duel  between  them,  ih.  ; 
won  the  seat  at  Newry 
through  the  Catholic  vote, 
268 

Courtenay  :  attack  on  Flood 
in  English  House  of  Com- 
mons, i.  88 

Crawford,      Sharman      (Irish 


member)  :  not  a  blind  fol- 
lower of  O'Connell,  ii.  126, 
171  ;  supported  Federalism, 
275 

Crime  :  different  views  of,  in 
Ireland  and  England,  ii.  7  ; 
difficulty  of  obtaining  con- 
victions in  Ireland,  ih. 

Croker,  Wilson  (M.P.  for  Dub- 
lin University,  1827-31)  ; 
strong  advocate  of  Catholics, 
i,  297 

Crolly,  Archbishop  (Armagh) ; 
favoured  the  Queen's  Col- 
leges, ii.  283 

Cullen,  Cardinal,  ii.  285 

Cumberland  Duke  of,  Chan- 
cellor of  Dublin  University 
(1807),  i.  297  ;  the  project  of 
placing  him  on  the  Throne, 
ii.  211 

Curran,  Mr.  :  his  high  opinion 
of  Flood,  i.  91 ;  president  of 
the  'Monks  of  the  Screw,' 
138 ;  poet,  wit,  orator,  and  ad- 
vocate,  221  ;  his  character, 

222  ;  labours  in  Parliament, 

223  ;  counsel  for  prisoners 
in  1798  :  defence  of  Hamil- 
ton Rowan,  ih.  ;  description 
of  Duigenan's  anti-Catholic 
speeches,  303 

Curry,  Dr.,  Catholic  writer: 
efforts  to  arouse  Irish  Catho- 
lics, i.  138 

Customs  and  Excise,  Boards 
of :  separated  by  Lord 
Townshend,  reunited  by 
Lord  Ilarcourt,  i,  53  sq. 

Darrynane,   the  residence  of 

O'Connell,     ii.     117,     192  ; 

O'Connell's  manner  of  life 

there,  200 
Daunt,    O'Neill :     scheme    of 
universal  military  education 

for  Irish  people,  243 
Davis  (of  the  *  Nation ') :  sup- 


334       LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


ported  Federalism,  ii.  275  ; 
became  a  Young  Irelander, 
ii.  289 ;  his  movement  for 
teaching  and  diffusing  the 
Irish  language,  290  ;  aliena- 
tion from  O'Connell,  295; 
his  death  (1845),  298 

D'Esterre  :  killed  in  a  duel 
with  O'Connell,  ii.  32 

Defenders  :  outbreaks  of  dis- 
order by,  in  Nortli  of  Ire- 
land, i.  146,  182;  looking  for 
French  assistance,  182 

De  Grey,  Lord  Viceroy  (1843): 
on  rapid  spread  of  repeal 
agitation,  ii.  257  ;  his  diffi- 
cult position,  262 

Derry,  Bishop  (Clonfert)  :  de- 
nunciation of  Queen's  Col- 
leges, ii.  283 

Devon  Commission  ;  assisted 
the  National  Board's  plans 
of  agricultural  teaching,  ii. 
130 

Diamond,  Battle  of  the  (  be- 
tween Protestants  and  Cath- 
olics, 1795),  i.  302,  ii.  216 

Disraeli,  Mr.  :  picture  of 
O'Connell's  last  appearance 
in  House  of  Commons,  ii. 
323,  sq. 

Dobbs,  Mr.  (a  monomaniac  on 
prophecy :  intervention  in 
Union  Debates,  i.  244  ;  a 
warm  advocate  of  Catholic 
claims,  299 

Douay  :  O'Connell  finished  his 
education  there,  ii.  3 

Down,  county  ;  petition 
against   Union,   i.  242 

Downes,  Chief  Justice  (Ire- 
land), ii.  29 

Downshire,  Lord,  his  patent 
as  Registrar  of  Court  of 
Chancery,  i.  197 

Dovle,  Bishop :  approved  Re- 
lief Bill  of  1821,  ii.  42  ;  in- 
culcates  '  hatred  of  tithes,' 


56  ;  on  the  excitement  of 
Catholics  after  1829,  101 ;  on 
O'Connell's  position  and 
power,  108;  tried  to  induce 
O'Connell  to  accept  office, 
120  11. ;  denunciation  of  the 
'brutal  canaille^  who  are 
'driving  the  people  into 
all  manner  of  folly  and  ex- 
cess,' 137  ;  on  benefits  of 
Sub-letting  and  Ejectment 
Acts,  189 

Drogheda :  petition  against 
Union,  i.  242 

Drummond,  Lender-Secretary 
(Ireland,  1835),  ii.  158 

Dublin  :  its  condition  in  eigh- 
teenth century,  i.  26  ;  Re- 
form riots  in,  i.  83  ;  trade 
outrages  frequent  (1783), 
112  ;  intense  Protestantism 
of  Corporation,  i.  146  ;  Cor- 
poration's petition  against 
Union,  242  ;  Corporation 
disfranchise  G rattan,  249  ; 
Guild  of  Dublin  merchants 
strike  his  name  off  their 
rolls,  250  ;  canal  to  the 
Shannon  (1763),  286  ;  grand 
jury's  resolution  (1810)  in 
favour  of  repeal,  ii.  26 ; 
O'Connell  elected  as  a  mem- 
ber, but  ejected  on  petition 
(1836),  116;  he  became  its 
Lord  Mayor,  168 ;  trade  union 
combinations  and  outrages 
in,  185  sq. 

Dublin  University.  See  Trin- 
ity College,  Dublin 

'  Dublin  University  Magazine,' 
ii.  291 

Duffy,  Gavan  (later  Sir 
Charles  :  editor  of  the  '  Na- 
tion'), ii.  265  ;  leader  of 
Young  Ireland  party,  288, 
his  historical  ballads,  289  ; 
estimate  of  O'Connell's  char- 
acter, 304 


INDEX 


335 


Duigenan,  Dr.  :  vituperative 
opponent  of  Catholic  claims, 
i.  303 

Duncannon,  Lord  :  a  warm 
friend  of  O'Connell,  ii,  120 

Dundas,  Henry  :  desired  con- 
cession to  Catholics,  i.  140 
sqq. ;  on  Addington's  minis- 
try, 271  n. 

Dungannon  :  Volunteer  Con- 
vention assembled  at,  i.  102 

Duvergier  :  on  O'Connell's 
oratory,  ii.  63  ;  on  Irish 
views  of  religious  toleration, 
233 

East  India  Company,  i.  159 

Ebrington,  Lord  (afterwards 
Lord  Fortescue,  Viceroy)  : 
close  relations  with  O'Con- 
nell, ii.  204  ;  treatment  of 
repealers,  ii.  254 

Edgeworth  (father  of  Maria 
E  d  g  ew  o  r  t  h) ;  f  a  v  o  u  r  e  d 
Union,  but  spoke  and  voted 
against  it,  i.  240 

Edward  III. :  Irish  members 
summoned  to  his  Parlia- 
ment, i.  4 

Effingham,  Lord.  i.  96 

Eldon,  Lord,  ii.  72,  80 

Elizabeth,  Queen  :  her  estab- 
lishment of  free  schools  in 
Irish  dioceses,  i.  16,  125 

Encumbered  Estates  Court,  ii. 
195 

Evangelical  party,  the  :  origin 
and  progress,  i.  294  ;  anti- 
Catholic  spirit  against  Home, 
295  ;  slow  growth  in  Ire- 
land, ih. 

Evictions  :  chief  source  of 
agrarian  crime,  i.  24  ;  ii.  50 
sq. ;  the  cost  of,  188 

Faction  fights,  ii.  216,  300  ; 
restrained  by  repeal  police, 
257 


Famines  (in  Ireland)  of  1783, 
i.  112  ;  after  bad  harvests  of 
1821  and  1822,  ii.  45;  of 
1847,  177  sqq.,  315  sq. 

Farmley  (co.  Kilkenny)  ; 
Flood's  country  house,  i.  90 

Federalism  :  a  proposed  com- 
promise with  repeal,  ii.  275  ; 
its  supporters,  ih.  ;  at  first 
adopted  by  O'Connell,  277  ; 
opponents  of  the  scheme, 
278 ;  O'Connell's  recantation, 
ih. 

'  Fencible  regiments,'  i.  68 

Ferguson,  Samuel  :  ii.  289, 
291 

Ff rench.  Lord :  dismissed  from 
magistracy  as  a  repealer,  ii. 
254 

Finances  (Irish)  :  deficit  in 
1783,  i.  112;  after  the  Union, 
270  sq. 

'  Financial  Relations  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  Report 
on  '  (1896),  i.  280 

Fingall,  Lord  (Catholic)  :  in 
communication  with  Fitz- 
william,  i.  180  ;  on  Catholic 
disaffection,  183,  took  the 
side  of  Union,  268;  approved 
of  the  veto,  309  sq. ;  arrested 
as  a  member  of  Catholic  As- 
sociation, ii.  29  ;  received 
Order  of  St.  Patrick  from 
George  IV.,  41  ;  member  of 
Catholic  Association  (1823), 
60 

Fitzgerald,  member  for  Clare  : 
takes  office  under  Welling- 
ton, ii.  83  ;  his  re-election 
opposed :  O'Connell  wins  the 
seat,  84  sq. ;  the  gentry  all 
voted  for  Fitzgerald,  89 

Fitzgibbon  (afterwards  Lord 
Clare)  :  cost  of  purchase  of  a 
majority  (1770),  i.  48  ;  opin- 
ion of  the  old  Irish  volun- 
teers, 83  n.  ;  Attorney-Gen- 


336      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION   IN  IRELAND 


eral  :  his  WhiteboyAct,  127; 
made  Lord  Chancellor,  129  ; 
persistent  opposition  to  Cath- 
olics, 142  ;  on  the  power 
of  landlords  over  tenants, 
152  ;  made  a  viscount  (1793), 
160  ;  determined  to  oppose 
the  new  Viceroy  (Fitzwil- 
liam),  166  ;  on  admission  of 
Catholics  to  Parliament,  18o ; 
desired  an  armed  constnbu- 
lary,  ib. ;  held  that  Catholic 
Emancipation  was  contrary 
to  the  Coronation  Oath  and 
Act  of  Settlement,  211  ;  his 
desire  (after  1793)  for  legis- 
lative union,  ib. ;  made  Earl 
of  Clare,  215  ;  on  state  of 
the  country,  216  ;  the  most 
ardent  supporter  of  Union, 
233  ;  indignation  at  Pitt's 
*  deception,'  258  n. ;  on  rapid 
improvement  of  Ireland 
(1782-98),  287 

Fitzpa trick  ;  anecdote  of 
O'Connell,  ii.  98 

Fitz William,  Lord  ;  designated 
to  succeed  Westmorland,  i. 

163  ;  his  policy  on  lleform 
and   the   Catholic   question, 

164  ;  relations  with  Grattan, 
ib.  ;  misunderstandings  with 
Pitt  as  to  his  policy,  166  sqq. ; 
history  of  his  Viceroyalty 
(1795),  167  sqq. ;  his  recall, 
195  ;  charges  against  Beres- 
ford,  198  ;  justification  of 
Fitzwilliam's  policy,  200  ; 
he  brought  his  case  before 
English  House  of  Lords,  206 

Flood,  Henry  :  educated  at 
Trinity  College  (Dublin)  and 
at  Oxford,  i.  35  ;  early  stud- 
ies, ib.;  his  character,  i6., 
married  a  Beresford,  36  ; 
member  for  Kilkenny  (1759), 
ib. ;  characteristics  of  his 
eloquence,  40  ;  G  r  a  1 1  a  n's 


opinion  of  it,  41  ;  objects  he 
aimed  at  in  Parliament,  ib. ; 
limitation  of  Parliament,  44  ; 
position  towards  Augmenta- 
tion of  Army  Bill,  45  ;  de- 
sired that  Irishmen  should 
hold  Irish  judicial  posts,  46  ; 
opposition  to  Lord  Towns- 
hend  (1771),  49  ;  number  of 
Commissioners  of  Kevenue 
with  seats  in  the  House,  ib. ; 
his  share  in  '  Baratariana,' 
50  ;  his  exceptional  position 
in  1772,  ib.;  accepts  office 
of  Vice-Treasurer,  51  ;  his 
vindication  of  this  step,  ib. ; 
in  favour  of  absentee  tax  and 
of  relaxation  of  commercial 
restrictions,  53  ;  his  taking 
office  a  fatal  turning  point 
in  his  career,  54  sq.  ;  posi- 
tion in  regard  to  American 
war,  55  ;  attacked  by  Grat- 
tan, 55  ;  Flood's  attempt  to 
enter  English  Parliament, 
57  ;  retained  office  under 
Lord  Buckinghamshire,  ib. ; 
Volunteer  movement ;  Flood 
a  colonel,  59  ;  efforts  to  ob- 
tain free  trade,  61  ;  resigns 
office  and  is  dismissed  from 
the  Council,  63  ;  difference 
with  Grattan  about  Volun- 
teer Convention,  64  ;  the 
controversy  on  Simple  Re- 
peal, ib. ;  Flood's  policy, 
68  sq. ;  ascendency  over  Vol- 
unteers, 69  ;  personal  ele- 
ment in  his  late  policy,  70  ; 
Charlemont's  estimate  of  his 
character,  71 ;  collision  with 
Grattan,  ib. ;  Flood's  ascend- 
ency over  Volunteer  Conven- 
tion, 74  ;  work  for  Reform  : 
his  ideal  a  democratic  Prot- 
estant Parliament,  75  ;  the 
Bill  drawn  up  by  Flood  and 
sanctioned  by   the   Conveu- 


INDEX 


337 


tion.  ih. ;  the  Catholics  ig- 
nored, ih. ;  provisions  of 
Bill,  76  ;  introduced  to  the 
Commons  by  Flood,  77  ;  its 
rejection,  76  ;  Flood's  object, 
to  overawe  Parliament,  81  ; 
his  purchase  of  a  seat  (Win- 
chester) in  England  :  simul- 
taneously member  of  the 
two  Parliaments,  84  ;  his 
Irish  Reform  Bill  again  re- 
jected (1784),  85  ;  supported 
protective  duties,  ih. ;  his 
failure  in  the  British  House, 
87  ;  opposed  Pitt's  commer- 
cial treaty  with  France,  88  ; 
introduced  a  Reform  Bill 
in  English  Commons,  90  ; 
loses  his  seats  in  both  Par- 
liaments (1790),  ih. ;  retire- 
ment and  death,  ih. ;  his 
will,  91  ;  estimate  of  his 
character,  91  sq. 

Forster,  Mr.  W.  E.  :  on  the 
condition  of  O'Connell's 
estate,  ii.  199  ;  on  O'Connell 
in  private  life,  201 

Foster,  John,  i.  86,  123,  261 

Foster,  Leslie  :  Louth  election 
(1826),  ii.  77  sq. ;  its  result, 
79 

Fox,  Charles  James  :  on  repeal 
of  Declaratory  Act,  i.  65  ; 
brings  forward  the  Renuncia- 
tory Act,  67  ;  strongly  op- 
posed to  Irish  Volunteers' 
demands  of  Reform,  81  ; 
on  Flood's  English  Reform 
Bill,  90  ;  on  Irish  legislative 
independence,  106  ;  desires 
a  commercial  treaty  with 
Ireland,  112  ;  denunciation 
of  Pitt's  commercial  pro- 
posals, 122  ;  reception  of 
Grattan  in  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment, 288  sq. ;  failure  of  his 
efforts  in  favour  of  Catho- 
lics (1805),  290 


France,  commercial  treaty 
with  (1786)  :  supported  by- 
Ireland,  i.  124 

Free  trade  :  desire  of,  between 
Ireland  and  England,  i.  4  ; 
triumph  of  movement  for, 
in  Ireland,  60;  English  dread 
of  free  trade,  119  ;  altered 
relative  position  of  the  two 
islands,  278 

'  Gallican  liberties  '  :  de- 
tested by  O'Connell,  ii.  233 

Gal  way  :  Queen's  College  at, 
ii.  282 

Genoa:  O'Connell's  death 
there,  ii.  325 

George  III.,  his  determination 
not  to  grant  Catholic  Eman- 
cipation, i.  264,  270 ;  his 
first  speech  after  the  Union, 
i.  269  ;  the  reason  why  he 
approved  of  it,  270  ;  threat 
of  abdication,  ih. ;  another 
attack  of  insanity,  272;  King 
demands  an  anti-Catholic 
pledge  from  his  ministers, 
291 

George  IV.  See  Prince  Re- 
gent. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.  :  his  work 
on  'Church  and  State'  (1838), 
ii.  149  ;  speech  (1835)  against 
invasion  of  property  of 
Church  of  Ireland,  i.  239 

Glebes  for  Catholic  clergy  : 
O'Connell's  proposal  of,  ii. 
70 

Glentworth,  Lord,  i.  197 

Gonsalvi,  Cardinal  (Secretary 
to  Pope  Pius  VII.)  :  in  fa- 
vour of  the  veto,  i.  313 

Gormanstown,  Lord,  ii.  60 

Gosf ord,  Lord  :  supported 
Union,  and  refused  promo- 
tion as  reward,  i.  239 

Goulburn  :  Chief  Secretary  to 
Lord   Welleslcy,  ii.   44  ;  on 


'338     LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


the  power  of  the  Catholic 
Association  (1823),  63  ;  fail- 
ure in  prosecution  of  O'Con- 
nell,  64. 

Gower,  Lord  Francis,  Chief 
Secretary :  O'Connell's  at- 
tack on  him,  ii.  Ill 

Graham,  Sir  J.,  ii.  148 

Grand  juries  :  Catholics  per- 
mitted to  sit  on,  i.  153  ;  their 
abuses  and  reform,  ii.  196  sq. 

Grattan,  Mr.  (father  of  Henry): 
Recorder  of  and  member  for 
Dublin,  i,  42  ;  his  character, 
94  ;  objection  to  his  son's 
political  principles,  ih. 

Grattan,  Henry— 1746  to  1782: 
his  youth,  i.  94  ;  early  mani- 
festation of  his  energy  of 
character,  ih. ;  study  of  elo- 
cution, 94  sq. ;  called  to  the 
Bar  (Temple),  95  sq. ;  under 
spell  of  Lord  Chatham,  ih. ; 
early  influence  of  Flood, 
98  ;  share  in  '  Baratariana,' 
ih. ;  brought  into  Parliament 
by  Lord  Charlemont,  ih. ; 
his  oratory  and  debating 
power,  98  sq. ;  his  political 
standpoint :  parliamentary 
independence,  101  ;  opposi- 
tion to  penal  code,  ih.\ 
speech  on  independence,  98; 
devotion  to  the  English  con- 
nection, 104 

Grattan,  Henry— 1782  to  1794: 
position  towards  *  Parlia- 
mentary reform,'  i,  116  ; 
Supported  Pitt's  commercial 
proposals,  121  ;  but  o[)posed 
his  modifications,  123  ;  ef- 
forts to  reform  tithe  abuses, 
127  ;  attack  upon  parliamen- 
tary abuses,  130  :  Responsi- 
bility Bill,  131  ;  Reform  Bill 
of  W.  Ponsonby  and  Grattan, 
132  ;  Grattan's  ideal  House 
of  Commons,   ih.\   belief    in 


necessity  of  an  Upper  Cham- 
ber,  133  ;  dislike  of  French 
democratic    theories,   ih. ;    a 
staunch  supporter  of  emanci- 
pation of  Catholics,  137  ;  ef- 
forts in  their  favour,  139  sqq., 
panegyric  on  Father  O'Leary, 
139 ;    on   Protestant  ascend- 
ancy,   147  ;    on  the  position 
of  Catholic  gentry  after  the 
Relief    Act   (1793),    154  sq.', 
measure  for  exempting  bar- 
ren  lands   from   tithe,   159  ; 
on  the  Convention  Act,   ih.\ 
his  political  position  in  1794, 
161 
Grattan,  Henry— 1794  to  1800  : 
his  own  outline  of  his  reform 
policy  (1794),  i.  161  ;  new  ef- 
fort   to    get    a    commercial 
treaty  with    England,    162  ; 
relations  with  Lord  Fitzwil- 
liam.      Viceroy       designate, 
1G4  sq. ;  Catholic  Bill,  (1795), 
187,    190  ;    Fitzwilliam's  re- 
call,  196  ;   Grattan's  motion 
for  inquiry  into  the  state  of 
the, nation,  206  ;  defence  of 
Fitzwilliam,  207  sqq. ;    Grat- 
tan's    political    moderation, 
212  ;  supports  establishment 
of  Maynooth,  216  ;  secession 
from  Parliament  :  '  Letter  to 
the  citizens  of  Dublin,'  218  ; 
his    private    life,    219  ;    de- 
nounced the  project  of  Union, 
228  ;     insults    heaped    upon 
him,  249  ;    induced  to  come 
back  to   Parliament    again  : 
dramatic  entry  (Jan.  16,  1800) 
as  member  for  Wicklow,  250; 
his    wonderful     speech,    250 
sq. ;  Corry's  reply  and  a  duel, 
251  ;  Grattan's  last  words  in 
Irish    Parliament,    252  sqq. ; 
his    desire    to  keep   govern- 
ment    in     hands     of     Irish 
gentry,  of  both  creeds,  280  ; 


INDEX 


339 


prognostication  of  Ireland's 
revenge  for  the  Union,  282  ; 
belief  that  Irish  people  were 
not  fit  for  a  democratic  gov- 
ernment, ih. 

Grattan,  Henry — after  the 
Union  :  for  a  time  retired 
from  politics,  i.  287  ;  con- 
tinued devotion  to  service  of 
Catholics,  288 ;  enters  British 
Parliament  (1805)  :  his  first 
speech  (on  Catholic  question) : 
great  success,  ib.  ;  his  belief 
in  gradual  assimilation  of  the 
two  creeds,  Catholic  and 
Protestant,  298  ;  his  protest 
against  Dr.  Duigenan's  mode 
of  controversy,  304  ;  Grat- 
tan's  political  followers 
(1806),  in  England  and  in 
Ireland,  ih. ;  refused  office 
in  the  Grenville  Ministry, 
306;  he  considered  the  Cath- 
olic question  abstracted 
from  any  party  or  adminis- 
tration, ih. ;  examples  of  the 
patriotic  spirit  with  which  he 
acted,  306  sq. ;  on  the  veto 
question,  308,  310,  313  sqq. ; 
the  Catholic  Bill  of  1813, 316 ; 
his  supersession  by  Sir  Henry 
Parnell,  317  ;  assaulted  by  a 
mob  in  Dublin  (1818),  ih.  ; 
esteem  and  veneration  shown 
him  in  English  House  of 
Commons,  317  5^'. ;  Sydney 
Smith's  eulogy,  318  ;  his  last 
years  in  Parliament,  319  ;  his 
position  towards  the  accom- 
plished union,  ih.  ;  last  days, 
320  ;  death  and  burial  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  321 ;  his 
dislike  of  O'Connell,  ii. 
25  ;  his  letter  on  repeal  of 
Union,  26  n. 

Greenland  fisheries  ;  Irish  ves- 
sels admitted  to  (1775),  i.  60 

Gregory,  Sir  W,  :   on  O'Con- 


nell's  estate,  ii.  199  ;  rela- 
tion's with  O'Connell,  204 

Gregory  XVI.,  Pope  :  his  con- 
demnation of  Liberal  Ca- 
tholicism, ii.  232 

Grenville,  Lord  :  favoured  the 
giving  concessions  to  Cath- 
olics, i.  140;  Memorandum 
of  instructions  to  Fitzwil- 
liam,  169,  178  ;  disapproved 
the  appointment,  175  ;  de- 
feat of  his  motion  in  Lords  in 
favour  of  Catholics  (1805), 
290  ;  his  Cabinet  refuse  the 
pledge  demanded  by  the 
King,  not  to  propose  conces- 
sions to  Catholics:  their  dis- 
missal from  office,  291 

Grenville,  William:  attack  on 
Flood,  i.  89 

Greville  :  on  O'Connell,  ii.  90, 
118,  161 

Grey,  Lord  :  speech  against 
Union,  i.  242  ;  Prime  Minis- 
ter (1830),  ii.  113;  determined 
hostility  to  O'Connell,  121  ; 
his  insistance  on  the  political 
clauses  in  Coercion  Act,  151 
sq. 

Grocers'  licenses :  opposition  to 
their  abolition,  ii.  217 

Habeas  Corpus  Act  :  not  ex- 
tended to  Ireland  after  1688, 
i.  26 

Hamilton,  Gerard  :  on  An- 
thony Malone's  eloquence,  i. 
37  ;  on  Hely  Hutchinson,  ih. 

Hamilton,  Sackville,  Under 
Secretary  (Ireland)  :  dis- 
missed by  Fitzwilliam,  i.  172 ; 
compensation,  173 

Hanoverian  Dynasty  :  its  re- 
ception in  Ireland,  i.  21 

Harcourt,  Earl  of  :  succeeded 
Lord  Townshend  as  Viceroy 
(1773),  i.  51  ;  seeks  and  gains 
support  of   Flood  as  Vice- 


340      LEADERS  OF   PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Treasurer,  ih. ;  Harcourt's 
conciliatory  policy,  53;  Kev- 
enue  Boards  reunited,  ih. ;  an 
absentee  tax  proposed  but 
rejected,  ib. ;  commercial  re- 
laxations granted,  54  ;  de- 
spatch of  Irish  troops  to 
America,  55  ;  measures  to 
secure  a  majority,  56  ;  in- 
crease of  national  debt  : 
financial  difficulties,  54  sq. ; 
resignation  (1776),  57 

Hardinge,  Sir  Henry,  Chief 
Secretary:  O'Connell  attacks 
him,  but  refuses  his  chal- 
lenge to  a  duel,  ii.  113 

Hardwicke,  Lord,  Viceroy 
(1801):  on  the  early  spread 
of  Irish  dislike  of  the  Union, 
ii.  26 

Hayes,  Father :  sent  to  Rome 
against  the  veto :  his  repulse, 
ii.  22 

Hearth  tax  (Ireland),  the,  i.  25; 
exemption  of  cottaeres  with 
only  one  hearth,  159 

*  Hedge  Schools,'  Catholic,  i. 
19 

Henry  VII. :  decreed  that  all 
then  existing  English  Stat- 
utes were  to  be  of  force  in 
Ireland,  i.  27;  regulations  as 
to  Irish  Pai'liament  (Povn- 
ings'  Act),  28 

Henry  VIII. :  his  provision  for 
schools  in  Ireland,  i.  16,  125 

Hereditary  revenue  of  Crown 
in  Ireland  :  growth  and  em- 
ployment of,  in  17th  century, 
i.  2 ;  changed  for  fixed  civil 
list,  159 

Heron,  Sir  R.,  Chief  Secretary 
to  Lord  Buckinghamshire, 
i.  57 

Heytesbury,  Lord,  Viceroy  : 
instructions  to  conciliate 
Catholics,  ii.  279 

Hoadly,  Primate,  i.  27 


Hobart,  Lord:  on  Pitt's  '  de- 
ception,' i.  258  n. 

Holland  :  successful  invasion 
of,  by  France  (1795),  i.  182, 
205  * 

Holland,  Lord,  i.  258  n. 

Hops,  foreign  :  import  into 
Ireland  permitted,  i.  62 

Horner :  description  of  Grat- 
tan,  i.  220 

Houghers,  the,  i.  24 

Huguenots:  their  treatment  in 
France  compared  with  that 
of  theCatholicsin  Ireland,  11 

Hume,  Joseph:  supports 
O'Connell's  repeal  agitation, 
ii.  117:  O'ConnelTs  opinion 
of  his  speeches,  ii.  210 

Hunt,  Mr.  Leigh  :  on  the 
repeal  cry,  ii.  254 

Hutchinson,  Hely:  an  inveter- 
ate place-hunter,  i.  37;  Pro- 
vost of  Trinity  College,  Dub- 
lin, 38;  liberal  policy  towards 
Catholics:  desire  to  establish 
a  Catholic  theological  faculty 
in  his  College,  39  :  efforts  to 
raise  the  education  of  Catho- 
lic priesthood,  and  for  united 
secular  education,  ih. ;  adopts 
Adam  Smith's  doctrines,  39; 
usually  acted  with  the  Gov- 
ernment, 40;  character  of  his 
oratory,  ih. ;  supported  the 
Augmentation  Bill,  47  ;  ad- 
vocated throwing  open  de- 
grees of  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  to  Catholics,  156 

Hutchinson,  Lord,  i.  306 

Income-tax,  ii.  96 

Inglis,  Sir  Robert :  originator 
of  phrase  '  godless  colleges ' 
(applied  to  Queen's  Colleges), 
ii.  283 

Ireland — House  of  Lords:  Pres- 
byterians unrepresented 
there,  i.  9  ;   protest  against 


INDEX 


341 


Lord  Townshend's  policy, 
49  ;  deprived  (by  English 
Act,  1719)  of  its  appellate 
jurisdiction,  27 ;  it  was  after- 
wards restored,  104  ;  argu- 
ments of  the  dissentient 
peers  against  Union,  270  ; 
the  House  a  perfectly  sub- 
servient body,  273 

Jacobites,  Irish,  i.  23 

James  II. :  little  enthusiasm 
for  among  Irish  Catholics, 
i.  21 

Jews:  O'Connell  favored  their 
emancipation,  ii.  94 

Johnson,  Dr.:  warning  against 
a  Union,  i.  229 

Judges,  Irish:  removable  at 
pleasure,  i.  27;  made  irre- 
movable (1782),  i.  43,  104 

Judicial  posts  in  Ireland  filled 
by  Englishmen:  Flood's  op- 
position, i.  46 

KJENMARE,  Lord  (Irish  Cath- 
olic) :  a  leader  of  the  Catholic 
Committee,  i.  139;  cause  of 
his  secession  from  it,  140 ;  in 
communication  with  Fitz- 
william,  180;  again  supports 
Catholic  Committee,  189; 
took  the  side  of  Union,  2G8 

Kenyon,  Father,  ii.  296,  305 

Keogh,  John:  a  democrat,  i, 
140;  became  guiding  influ- 
ence of  Catholic  Committee, 
ih. ;  a  leader  of  Catholic  party 
in  the  struggle  of  1793  and 
1793,  ii.  20;  his  policy  of 
'dignified  silence'  after  the 
Union,  ib. ;  retirement  from 
the  Catholic  movement,  20 

Kerry,  the  county  favoured 
Union,  ii.  5 

Kerry,  the  Knight  of:  favoured 
Union,  ii.  5 


'  Kildare  Street  Society '  (Irish 
educational  institution):  ii. 
127  sqq. ;  respective  numbers 
(in  1825)  of  Protestants  and 
Catholics  attending  the 
schools,  128;  their  books  ap- 
proved by  Bishop  Doyle,  ib. ; 
Evangelicals  objected  to  their 
religious  neutrality :  Catholic 
priests  to  the  unrestricted 
reading  of  the  Bible,  129 

Kilkenny:  R.  C.  Bishop  fa- 
voured Union,  i.  267 

King's  Counsel :  the  exclusion 
of  Catholics,  ii.  13;  distribu- 
tion of  silk  gowns  to  Catholic 
barristers  after  Emancipa- 
tion, 99;  O'Connell  passed 
over,  ib. 

Kirwan,  Dean:  i.  299 

Kyteler,  Dame  Alice :  tried  for 
witchcraft  (1324),  i.  801  n. 

Lacordaire,  PSre,  ii.  233 

Lagan  (river):  grant  for  im- 
proved navigation  of,  i.  287. 

Lake,  General:  his  proclama- 
tion, i.  218 

Lamennais,  ii.  233 

Land  tenure:  changes  in,  ii. 
49;  attemptto  abolish  middle- 
men, ih. ;  evils  of  its  precari- 
ousness,  191  sq. ;  growth  of 
tenancies  at  will,  193 

Langrishe,  Sir  Hercules:  his 
share  in  '  Baratariana,'  i.  49; 
high  opinion  of  Flood,  91 ; 
assisted  G  rattan's  efforts  for 
Catholics,  139 

Law,  Bishop  (Elphin):  gener- 
ous treatment  of  Catholics, 
i.  300 

Ledru-Hollin:  promised 
France's  assistance  to  Ire- 
land, ii.  253 

'  Legion  Club '  (Swift's  Satire), 
i.  1 

'  Leinster     Declaration,'     the 


342      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


(against  repeal  agitation), 
ii.  107 

Leinster,  Duke  of:  on  disabil- 
ities of  Catholic  gentry,  i. 
155;  supported  O'Connell, 
ii.  90 

Levant,  direct  trade  between 
Ireland  and,  pern:iitted,  i.  G2 

Lever,  Charles,  ii.  291 

Libel  law,  Irish :  assimilated  to 
that  of  Great  Britain,  i.  159 

Limerick:  violent  clerical  op- 
position to  Relief  Bill  of 
1821,  ii.  43 

Linen  trade  of  Ireland:  efforts 
to  encourage,  i.  8,  60 

Litta,  Cardinal:  letter  to  Irish 
bishops,  ii.  22  sg. 

Littleton,  Mr.,  Chief  Secretary 
(1833),  ii.  142,  150  sg. 

Liverpool,  Lord  :  liis  Ministry 
divided  on  the  Catholic 
claims,  ii.  30 

Lords  Justices  of  Ireland,  the, 
i.  27 

Loughborough,  Lord,  Chan- 
cellor: inflamed  George  III.'s 
opposition  to  emancipation, 
i.  270 

Lough  Xeagh  to  Newrv  canal 
(1763).  i.  287 

Lough  Swilly:  canal  connect- 
ing it  with  Lough  Foyle 
(1763),  i.  287 

Lucas,  Charles,  i.  41  sgg. 

Lucas,  Frederick:  visit  to 
O'Connell,  ii.  324 

Ma CARTHY  (Irish  poet) :  on  *the 
word  and  the  pen,'  ii.  302 

Macaulay,  Lord :  on  the  Union 
scheme,  i.  255:  on  Irish  par- 
liamentary corruption,  284 
sg. ;  repeated  the  invectives  of 
Wolfe  Tone,  285  n. ;  spoke 
in  favour  of  1833  Coercion 
Bill,  ii.  141;  on  the  trial  of 
O'Connell,  266 


MacHale,  Archbishop:  in  alli- 
ance with  O'Connell,  ii.  222; 
opposed  to  Archbishop  Mur- 
ray, ib. ;  supports  repeal  ag- 
itation, 223;  denunciation  of 
Queen's  Colleges,  ii.  283 

Maclaurin,  Colin,  i.  298  n. 

]Macnamara,  Major,  ii.  81 

Macnevin,  Dr.;  leader  of 
United  Irishmen,  i.  158 

McCulloch,  Mr. :  theory  about 
absenteeism,  ii.  196 

Magistracy,  the  (Irish):  Welles- 
ley's  reform  of,  ii.  57;  Petty 
Sessions  established  (1823), 
58;  dismissal  of  magistrates 
who  favoured  repeal,  253  sg. 

Maguire.  Father,  in  Clare  elec- 
tion, ii.  84 

Mahon,  O'Gorman:  helped 
O'Connell  in  Clare  election, 
ii.  84 

Malmesbury,  Lord:  on  Ad- 
dington's  ministry,  i.  27  n. 

Malone,  Anthony:  a  distin- 
guished orator  in  Parliament 
of  George  II.,  i.  36  sg. 

Manchester  and  Worsley  canal 
(1761),  i.  286  ^ 

Mangan:  a  Young  Ireland 
poet,  ii.  289  sg. 

Manners,  Lord:  Irish  Chan- 
cellor, ii.  13 

Mansfield,  Lord  (Murray):  de- 
cision of  an  Irish  law  case, 
i.  66;  Grattan's  opinion  of, 
97 

Markham,  Archbishop  (York), 
i.  70 

Marriages,  early:  encouraged 
by  Catholic  clergy  in  Ireland, 
ii.  55;  cause  of  subdivision 
of  farms,  ib. 

Martineau,  Miss:  on  O'Connell 
as  a  landlord,  ii.  198 

Mathew,  Father  (the  temper- 
ance advocate),  ii.  201,  238, 
263 


INDEX 


343 


Maimsell  (Tory  journalist),  ii. 
275 

Maynooth  College,  i.  156 ;  Gov- 
erument  grant  to  increased, 
ii.  279  sq. 

Meagher,  Thomas:  speech  in 
favour  of  insurrection,  ii.  303 

Meath:  R,  C.  Bishop  favoured 
Union,  i.  267 

Melbourne,  Lord :  his  brief  first 
Ministry  (1884),  ii.  153;  dis- 
missed by  the  King,  ib. ;  his 
second  ministry  (1835),  156; 
O'Connell's  relations  with, 
157;  denial  that  O'Connell's 
support  had  been  bought  on 
any  terms  whatever,  160 ;  re- 
medial measures  for  Ireland : 
municipal  reform,  166;  com- 
mutation of  tithes,  170;  poor 
law,  170;  offered  office  to 
O'Connell,  220,  253 

Memoir  on  Irish  history,  O'Con- 

^  nell's,  ii.  221 

Methodists :  rise  and  progress, 
i.  294 

Middle  class,  English;  had 
little  equivalent  in  Ireland, 
ii.  46 

Middlemen,  i.  6,  26;  their  ex- 
tortions, ii.  45;  attempts  to 
get  rid  of  them,  49 ;  defended 
by  O'Connell,  190 

Miley,  Rev.  Dr. :  account  of 
O'Connell's  last  days,  ii.  825 

Militia  force  instituted  (1793), 
i.  159 

Mihier,  Bishop  (one  of  the 
Vicars-Apostolic  of  English 
Catholics) :  agent  in  England 
for  Irish  bishops,  i.  809;  ap- 
proval of  the  veto,  ib. ;  dis- 
claimed a  statement  in 
Ponsonby's  speech,  310; 
pamphlet  in  defence  of  veto, 
ib.;  his  recantation,  811; 
denunciation  of  Grattan's 
Catholic    Bill    (1813),    316; 


Catholic  opinion  in  England 
against  Milner,  817;  his 
visits  to  Rome:  modifies  his 
opinion  on  the  veto,  ii.  24; 
opposed  Relief  Bill  of  1821, 
43 

Milton,  Lord,  Chief  Secretary 
to  Lord  Fitzwilliam,  i.  172    i 

Mitchel,  John ;  admiration  for 
Thomas  Carlyle,  ii.  289 ;  ar- 1 
tide  (in  '  Nation ')  on  the 
destruction  of  railways  in 
case  of  war,  298;  his  influ- 
ence in  the  Young  Ireland 
party,  298  sq. ;  land  policy, 
288;  attack  on  O'Connell, 
305 

Molyneux:  on  the  legislative 
powers  of  King,  Lords,  and 
Commons  of  Ireland,  i.  1; 
desire  for  a  legislative  Union, 
4;  references  to,  27,  41, 
64 

Monahan:  Attorney-General 
(Ireland,  1846),  ii.  820 

'  Monks  of  the  Screw  ' :  convi- 
vial society  presided  over  by 
Curran,  i.  138 

Montalembert:  disappointed  at 
O'Connell's  oratory,  ii.  207; 
his  Liberal  Catholicism  con- 
demned, 233;  high  opinion 
of  O'Connell,  234 

Moore,  Thomas  (the  poet):  edu- 
cated at  Trinity  College,  Dub- 
lin, i.  156;  protest  against 
repeal  agitation,  ii.  107;  on 
O'Connell's  language  and 
conduct,  ib. 

Morpeth,  Lord  (afterwards 
Lord  Carlisle  and  Viceroy): 
Chief  Secretary,  ii.  158;  the 
Dublin  election  of  1842,  204; 
personal  friend  of  O'Connell, 
205 

Mount  Melleray  monastery,  ii. 
219 

Mountmorres,   Lord:    on  the 


344     LEADERS   OF   PUBLIC   OPINION   IN   IRELAND 


practice  in  Irish  legislation 
before  1782;  i.  28 

Moylan,  Dr.  (R.  C.  Bishop  of 
Cork) :  advocate  of  Union,  i. 
267 

Mulgrave,  Lord  (afterwards 
Marquis  of  Normanby),  Vice- 
roy (1835),  ii.  158 

Mullaghraast:  repeal  meeting 
held  at,  ii.  250 

Municipal  government  :  con- 
dition of  Irish,  ii.  165;  Gov- 
ernment measure  of  Reform 
(1837),  166;  finally  settled 
(1840),  167 

Munster:  Union  popular 
among  the  Catholics,  ii.  5; 
disturbances  in  (1822),  54 

Murray,  Dr.  (R.C.  Archbishop 
of  Dublin):  supported  Stan- 
ley's education  scheme,  ii. 
129;  and  the  Queen's  Col- 
leges, 288 

Murphy,  Father  John,  leader 
of  rebellion  in  Wexford,  i. 
231 

Mutiny  Act,  i.  27,  ii.  102 

'Nation'  newspaper  (founded 
1843)  :  its  writers  counted 
upon  a  coming  armed  con- 
flict, ii.  254,  259;  supported 
scheme  of  Queen's  Colleges. 
283;  organ  of  Young  Irehmd 
party,  288;  O'Connell's  lack 
of  sympathy  with  much  of 
its  writers'  work,  293  sqq. 
National  Bank,  the,  ii.  220 
National  Debt  (Ireland),  i.  3; 
its  amount  in  1715  and  1720, 
i.  30;  in  Lord  Harcourt's 
administration,  56;  amouut 
of  in  1800,  276;  that  of  Great 
Britain  at  same  period,  277; 
Ireland  bankrupt  (1817); 
debt  amalgamated  with  Eng- 
lish, 278 


Nationalities,  the  doctrine  of, 
ii.  290 

Navy,  British;  Irish  vote  in 
aid  of  (1782),  i.  104;  Catho- 
lics allowed  commissions  in, 
i.  319 

Neilson  (United  Irishman), 
Curran's  defence  of,  i.  222 

Newfoundland  fisheries  thrown 
open  to  Ireland,  i.  55,  60 

New  Light  or  Arian  party 
(Ulster  Presbyterians),  ii. 
227 

Newman,  Cardinal:  his  'un- 
speakable aversion '  for 
O'Connell's  policy  and  acts, 
ii.  235 

Newport,  Sir  John:  the  in- 
creased number  of  Catholic 
students  in  Dublin  Univer- 
sity (1807),  i.  297;  his 
Ejectment  Act,  ii.  189 

Newrv;  canal  to  Lough  Neagh 
(1763),  i.  287 

Newtownbarry :  deadly  conflict 
in  (1831),  ii.  134 

Nicholas,  Emperor  (Russia),  ii. 
95 

Norbury,  Lord,  ii.  14;  relations 
with  Saurin,  16;  retort  to 
O'Connell,  35 

North,  Lord:  on  Hely  Hutchin- 
son, i.  38;  liis  liberal  tenden- 
cies towards  Ireland,  60,  62 ; 
measure  of  free  trade  granted 
by,  225 

Northington,  Loi'd,  Viceroy: 
desired  to  give  Flood  a  lead- 
ing place  in  his  Administra- 
tion, i.  70 

Northumberland,  Duke  of, 
Viceroy,  ii.  Ill 


Oakboys:  outrages  by,  i.  802 
O'Beirne,  Bishop :  his  share  in 

the  Act  of  Union,  i.  237 
O'Brien,  Smith  (Irish  member): 


INDEX 


345 


not  a  blind  follower  of 
O'Connell,  ii.  125;  joins  the 
Repeal  Association  (1844), 
ii.  271;  on  O'Connell's  last 
years,  287 
O'I'rien,  Sir  Lucius  (Clerk  of 

II anaper),  i.  177 
O'Connell,  Daniel  (uncle  of  the 
agitator):  his  interesting  ca- 
reer, ii.  5,  117 
O'Connell,     Daniel  —  Youth  : 
family  and  birth,  ii.  2;  edu- 
cated at  Cork,  St.  Omar  and 
Douay,    3;     early  opinions, 
ib. ;  trace  of  his  French  edu- 
cation in  his  manner,  4;  poli- 
ties of  his  family,  5;  intel- 
lectual character,  6 ;  becomes 
a  sound  lawyer  and  brilliant 
advocate,  7;   supreme  as  a 
cross-examiner,  8;  anecdotes 
of  his  skill  as  advocate,  ^sqq. ; 
popularity  at  the   Bar,   12; 
his  defence  of  the  violence  of 
his  language,    13. ;    galling 
position  of  Catholic  lawyers, 
ih. ;     the    trial    of    Magee : 
O'Connell's  attack  on  Saurin 
(Attorney-General),    14  sq. ; 
O'Connell'suseofastolencon- 
fidential  letter,  IG;  estimate 
of  O'Connell's  place  at  the 
Bar,  17;  his  professional  in- 
come,  18;  his  early  designs, 
ih. ;  dominating  influence  on 
Catholic  Committee,  20;  in- 
fluence on  thebishopsagainst 
the  veto,  22;  difference  with 
Home,  22  sqq. ;  O'Connell  at- 
tacked    by     Grattan,     ih. ; 
O'Connell's     reply    to     the 
charge   that   his    policy  re- 
tardedEmancipation,  ^6.  ;the 
project  of  repeal  was  not  first 
started    by    O'Connell,    26; 
methods  of  his  agitation,  27, 
28,  80;  the  Catholic  Bill  of 
1813:  Grattan  thrown  over 


by  O'Connell  and  the  bishops, 
30;  movement  for  Emanci- 
pation slackens,  32 
0  Connell,  Daniel  —  1811  to 
1821:  steady  rise  of  profes- 
sional reputation,  ii.  32;  tes- 
timonial from  Catholics  for 
services  to  the  cause,  ih. ; 
duel  with  D'Esterre,  ih. ; 
collision  with  Peel:  a  duel 
between  them  prevented,  34 
sq. ;  his  resolution  not  to  be 
drawn  into  a  duel  again,  35; 
his  abusive  language,  35  sq. ; 
the  *  Witchery  Resolution  ' 
(against  Prince  Regent),  39 ; 
his  persistent  attachment  to 
connection  with  England 
through  medium  of  the 
Crown,  ih. ;  prominent  in  the 
reception  of  George  IV.  in 
Ireland  (1821),  ih. ;  changed 
sentiments  towardstheKing, 

O'Connell,  Daniel  -  1821  to 
1825:  O'Connell's  efforts  for 
parliamentary  reform,  ii.  41 ; 
O'Connell's  opposition  to 
Plunket's  Relief  Bill  (1821), 
42  sq. ;  Lord  Wellesley  Vice- 
roy: O'Connell  attempts  a 
compromise  about  the  veto, 
43;  O'Connell  on  agricul- 
tural wages,  46;  on  middle- 
men, 51 ;  the  organisers  of 
crime  were  not  usually  the 
very  poorest,  53 ;  his  hostil- 
ity to  the  tithe  system :  ad- 
vocated '  passive  resistance,' 
57;  effort  to  use  priests  in 
politics,  59 ;  work  of  the  new 
Catholic  Association  (1823) 
in  this  direction:  O'Connell 
and  Shell  united,  59;  Catholic 
rent,  60;  comparison  of  the 
oratory  of  Shell  and  O'Con- 
nell, GO  sq. ;  O'Connell  pros- 
ecuted    by     Plunket,      62; 


346      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


O'Connell's  evidence  on  state 
of  Ireland  (1825),  68;  his 
conciliatory  spirit  at  that 
time,  ih. ;  on  the  securities 
required  by  Government,  69 ; 
payment  of  priests,  69  sq. ; 
the  disfranchisement  of  40s. 
freeholders,  70;  defeat  of  the 
1825  Bill,  72;  suppression  of 
Catholic  Association,  73 

O'Connell,  Daniel  —  1826  to 
1829:  O'Connell  sets  up  a 
new  Association:  its  osten- 
sible purposes,  ii.  74;  elec- 
tion of  1S26:  revolt  of  the 
40s.  freeholders,  75  sq. ;  de- 
cided the  fate  of  Catholic 
question,  79;  0  Connell's 
policy  was  opposed  to  rebel- 
lion or  any  form  of  crime, 
ib. ;  his  desire  to  conciliate 
Protestants,  81 ;  promotes 
abolition  of  Test  and  Cor- 
poration Acts,  82  sq. ;  Clare 
election,  84  sqq. ;  Catholic 
Emancipation  won,  86  sqq. ; 
O'Connell  unpopular  with 
English  Catholics,  89;  sketch 
of  him  in  'The  Greville 
Memoirs,'  90;  his  speech  at 
Bar  of  Commons,  92 ;  his  re- 
ception in  the  House:  his 
speeches,  93;  his  parliamen- 
tary career,  94  sqq. 

O'Connell,  Daniel  —  1829  to 
1841:  his  position  after 
Emancipation,  ii.  97;  dislike 
of  Wellington,  98;  O'Con- 
nell passed  over  in  first  list 
of  Catholic  King's  Counsels, 
99;  remaining  Catholic  dis- 
qualifications, 99  sq.,  102; 
'  the  address  of  the  hundred 
promises,'  104;  rise  of  re- 
peal agitation :  its  supporters 
and  opponents,  104  sqq. ;  let- 
ter to  Irish  people  (1830), 
expanding  his  Clare  address, 


109;  popular  apathy  to  all 
reforms  other  than  repeal, 
110;  suppression  of  various 
associations.  111;  Anglesey 
(Viceroy)  fails  to  dissuade 
O'Connell  from  agitation, 
113  ;  the  agitator  prose- 
cuted, without  result,  forcon- 
spiracy,  114;  the  O'Connell 
tribute,  114  sqq.;  drops  re- 
peal for  a  time  to  support 
the  struggle  for  Reform,  118 
sq. ;  Whigs  desire  to  make 
him  Attorney-General,  120; 
his  dislike  of  Stanley,  ii., 
142;  his  disappointment  at 
tlie  Irish  Reform  Bill,  1225^. ; 
'O'Connell's  Tail,'  125  sq.-, 
Grey's  scheme  of  national 
education,  126;  O'Connell 
showed  little  interest  or  fer- 
vour on  the  subject,  131 ;  his 
tithe  proj)osals,  132  sq. ;  tithe 
war,  133;  increase  of  agrarian 
crime,  135;  Coercion  Bill  of 
1833,136;  O'Connell's  denun- 
ciation  of  it,  138  sqq. ;  rela- 
tions >vith  Whig  Ministry, 
143  sqq. ;  refuses  office,  146, 
160;  his  Repeal  resolution 
(1834),  147;  surplus  revenues 
of  Irish  Church,  148  ;  the  po- 
litical clauses  in  Coercion 
Act:  Littleton's  conduct  to- 
wards O'Connell  on  the  sub- 
ject, 150  sq. ;  O'Connell's 
influence  over  the  Melbourne 
Government,  152;  his  gains 
in  1835  election,  154;  action 
against  tithes:  his  proposals, 
155 ;  Lord  J.  Russell's  Appro- 
priation Clause,  156,  168; 
supports  Melbourne's  second 
Ministry,  158;  his  influence 
on  Ii'ish  appointments,  ih. ; 
declared  himself  a  supporter 
of  the  Ministry,  162;  tempo- 
rary abandonment  of  repeal, 


INDEX 


347 


162  sq. ;  Municipalities  Bill 
(1836-40),  166  sg.;  he  be- 
comes first  Lord  Mayor  of 
Dublin,  168;  his  efforts  for 
total  diversion  of  the  tithe 
charge  from  the  Establish- 
ment, 171;  attitude  to\Yards 
Melbourne's  poor  law  scheme 
(1837),  174  5^-. ;  speech  on  the 
subject,  175  sqq. ;  his  appre- 
hensions about  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  poor  law  into  Ire- 
land shared  by  many  com- 
petent judges,  182;  his  de- 
nunciation of  trade  -  union 
outrages,  185;  his  agrarian 
policy,  186  sqq. ;  he  thought 
clearances  a  great  cause  of 
agrarian  crime,  192;  de- 
manded compensation  for 
improvements,  194;  desired 
an  absentee  tax,  and  pro- 
moted the  reform  of  grand 
juries  (1836),  197;  indictment 
brought  by  the  *  Times ' 
against  O'ConnelFs  manage- 
ment of  his  own  estate,  198; 
evidence  of  his  kindly  care 
of  his  tenants,  199;  his  life 
at  Darrynane,  200;  he  took 
Father  Mathew's  pledge  as 
an  example  to  the  people, 
202;  his  hospitality  and  his 
guests,  203 ;  elements  of  real 
nobility  in  his  character,  204; 
the  fascination  he  exercised 
over  young  men,  204  sq. ;  his 
oratory  and  management  of 
his  voice,  ib. ;  his  manner  of 
addressing  mobs,  207;  Eng- 
lish opinion  of  him,  208;  his 
democratic  crusade:  its  ob- 
ject, 209;  never  a  revolution- 
ist, 210;  devotion  to  Queen 
Victoria,  203;  never  a  sepa- 
ratist, 212,  223;  on  the  he- 
reditary principle  in  an 
Upper    Chamber,    213;    his 


violence  of  language,  213  sq.  * 
dread  of  French  Revolution- 
ary principles,  214;    dislike 
and  distrust  of  English  char- 
acter, 215;  opposed  abolition 
of    grocers'    licences,      217; 
founded  (1836)  the  '  General 
Association  of  Ireland':  its 
objects,    218;     financial 
schemes,  219;  again  declined 
to  take  office,  220;  his  Me- 
moir on  Irish  history,  221; 
alliance     with     Archbishop 
MacHale,  ib. ;  renewed  agi- 
tation for  repeal  (1838),  222 
sq. ;  The  'Precursors'  Society, 
ib. 
O'Connell,    Daniel  —  1841    to 
1845 :  a  new  pliase  of  repeal 
agitation,  ii.  225;  opposition 
of  many  of   O'Connell's  old 
followers,     226  ;      hopes    to 
divide    the    Ulster    Presby- 
terians,  ib. ;   his  expedition 
to  Belfast,  227;   he  claimed 
to  have    been  a    consistent 
advocate  of  religious  liberty, 
229  sq. ;  fusion  of  democracy 
and  Catholicism  the  ideal  of 
his  life,  231;  O'Connell's  de- 
testation   of    the   '  so-called 
Galilean   liberties,'   233;   he 
drew  Ireland  out  of  the  ob- 
scurity   into  which    it    had 
fallen,   234  ;    his    European 
reputation,  ib. ;  a  sincere  and 
ardent    Catholic,    235    sqq. ; 
he    abstained    from     repeal 
meetings  during  the  year  he 
was    Lord  Mayor,    240;    in 
pecuniary    difficulties :    res- 
cued by    Fitzpatrick,    241  ; 
his  hope  of  drawing  Protes- 
tants and    gentry  into  the 
repeal  movement,  242;  car- 
ried, in  Dublin  Corporation, 
a  vote  for  petition  for  repeal 
(1843),    243 ;    the    monster 


348      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


meetings, 244  sqq. ;  dangerous 
language  used  by  O'Connell, 
250;  he  checks  military  ten- 
dencies of  some  of  his  fol- 
lowers, 252;  his  treatment  of 
Ledru-Rollin's  offer  of  help 
from  France,  253;  Govern- 
ment dismissal  of  O'Connell 
and  other  repeal  magistrates, 
254;  Repeal  Association  rap- 
idly becoming  the  real  gov- 
ernment of  the  country,  256; 
projected  Council  of  Three 
Hundred,  258  ;  crisis  ap- 
proaching, 259;  defiant  lan- 
guage of  O'Connell  at  Tara, 
ih. ;  Clontarf  meeting  pro- 
claimed, 263  ;  O'Connell 
obeyed  the  order:  a  collision 
averted,  ih.\  disappointment 
and  disgust  of  his  followers : 
his  ascendency  broken,  205; 
the  State  trial,  ih. ;  verdict 
of  guilty,  2G6  ;  conduct  of 
the  trial  criticised,  266  sqq. ; 
O'Connell  at  large,  on  bail, 
269  ;  the  sentence,  270  ; 
O'Connell  in  prison  pending 
appeal  :  enormous  rise  in 
repeal  rent,  271 ;  the  appeal 
heard  in  Lords:  decision  of 
the  Lords,  272;  popular  re- 
joicing, 273;  his  expression 
of  belief  that  '  human  blood 
is  no  cement  for  the  temple 
of  human  liberty,'  273  sq. 
O'Connell,  Daniel  —  his  last 
days  :  period  of  decadence 
had  set  in,  ii.  274;  waning  of 
his  phvsical  powers,  ih. ; 
'  Federalism,'  275 ;  O'Connell 
for  a  time  adopts  it:  recan- 
tation, 278;  the  Queen's  Col- 
leges (1845),  280  sqq. ;  O'Con- 
nell denounces  them,  284;  his 
view  that  Catholic  authority 
alone  should  direct  Catholic 
education,  286;   his  quarrel 


with  Young  Ireland  party, 
287  sqq. ;  his  strong  disap- 
proval of  the  physical  force 
party's  policy,  299  ;  de- 
nounced Mitch  el's  railway 
article  (in  the  '  Nation'),  ih. ; 
he  never  really  lost  his  popu- 
larity, 306 ;  still  continued  to 
act  and  speak  as  a  repealer, 
307  ;  yet  desired  to  drop 
repeal,  808  sq. ;  approved  of 
repealers  accepting  govern- 
ment offices,  312;  anticipa- 
tion of  the  great  famine,  316; 
continued  support  of  the 
Whigs,  318;  his  friends  ob- 
tain Government  places,  320; 
efforts  to  meet  the  famine, 
321;  his  last  appearance  in 
House  of  Commons,  323  sq. ; 
his  last  illness,  324  sq. ;  his 
death,  325 

O'Connell,  James  (brother  of 
the  agitator):  on  Daniel's 
thriftlessness,  ii.  118 

O'Connell,  John  (brother  of  the 
agitator),  ii.  6,  107 

O'ConneU,  John  (son  of  the 
agitator),  ii.  304 

O'Connell,  Maurice  (uncle  of 
the  agitator),  ii.  6;  adopted 
his  nephew  and  left  him  a 
valuable  estate,  117 

O'Connell,  Morgan  (son  of  the 
agitator):  obtains  (1846)  a 
Government  place,  ii.  320 

O'Connor,  Arthur,  i.  138,  158, 
ii.  187 

O'Conor,  Don  :  obtains  a  Gov- 
ernment office,  ii.  320 

O'Ferrall  :  obtains  a  Govern- 
ment office,  ii.  320 

O'Hagan,  Thomas  (afterwards 
Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland) : 
supported  Federalism,  ii. 
275 

O'Leary,  Father,  i.  138  sq. 

O'Loughlin,    Mr.     (Catholic), 


INDEX 


349 


Solicitor-General  for  Ireland 
(1835),  ii.  158 

O'Rahilly,  Egan :  his  poem  (in 
Irish)  on  calamities  brought 
on  Ireland  by  the  Revolution, 
i.  22 

Orange  Boys  (Ulster),  outrages 
by,  i.  218,  303 

Orangemen  :  foundation  of 
Orange  Society,  i.  229;  posi- 
tion towards  Union,  233, 268 ; 
growth  in  numbers  and  fa- 
naticism (1821),  ii.  64,  80; 
prepared  to  resist  repeal  even 
by  force,  106 

Orde  (Chief  Secretary,  Ireland), 
i.  114;  his  scheme  of  national 
education,  125  sq. 

O'Sullivan,  Samuel,  ii.  291 

O'Sullivan,  Mortimer,  ii.  291 

Ottiwell:  his  suspicious  tran- 
saction with  Beresf  ord,  1. 197, 
199 

Outlawries  after  1641  and  1688, 
i.  20 

Palmerston,  Lord  :  on  ob- 
structiveness  of  Irish  mem- 
bers, ii.  126 

Parnell,  Sir  Henry,  i.  268,  ii. 
55 

Parnell,  Sir  John  (Irish  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer),  i. 
165,  268;  lost  his  seat  at 
Newry  through  the  Catholic 
vote,  lb. 

Parsons,  Sir  Lawrence  (after- 
wards second  Earl  of  Rosse, 
1.  91;  prediction  that  the 
power  of  religion  would  be 
opposed  to  territorial  inter- 
est, 153  sq. ;  belief  that  the 
reform  question  and  Catholic 
question  were  indissolubly 
connected,  157;  debate  on 
his  amendment  condemning 
Union  (Januarv  1800),  250 

Peel,  Sir  Robert.'i.  238,  317,  ii. 


17,  24 ;  Chief  Secretary  for 
Ireland,  30  ;  despondency 
about  success  in  his  opposi- 
tion to  Emancipation,  ih. ; 
lifelong  antipathy  between 
him  and  O'Connell,  33  ;  a 
duel  between  them  arranged, 
but  prevented,  34  ;  defeat  of 
his  proposal  (1821)  to  exclude 
Catholics  from  Privy  Council 
and  Judicial  Bench,  43,  sq.; 
on  the  lawlessness  of  Tip- 
perary,  53 ;  '  plenty  and  pros- 
perity incite  to  crime,'  ih. ; 
on  the  power  swayed  by 
Catholic  Association  (1823), 
63  ;  on  O'Connell's  inflam- 
matory language,  ih.;  per- 
sistent opponent  of  Catholic 
claims :  resigns  office  in  Can- 
ning's Cabinet,  81  ;  in  Wel- 
lington's Ministry,  ih.;  his 
political  character,  ih. ;  an- 
ticipation of  character  of 
future  Catholic  members, 
124  sq.;  supported  Coercion 
Bill  of  1833,  141  ;  reply  to 
O'Connell's  Repeal  resolu- 
tion, 147  ;  growth  of  popu- 
lar esteem  for  Peel  as  a 
statesman,  ih. ;  opinion  of 
the  limit  of  State  interfer- 
ence with  Church  revenues, 
149  ;  succeeds  Melbourne  as 
Prime  Minister  (1834),  154  ; 
dissolution  :  the  '  Tamwortli 
manifesto,'  ih.  ;  retirement 
from  office,  156;  Irish  muni- 
cipal reform  (1837),  167;  his 
Ministry  of  1841,  225;  decla- 
ration (1843)  of  his  determi- 
nation to  maintain  theUnion, 
256  ;  his  difficulties,  261  ; 
desire  not  to  precipitate  a 
conflict,  262  ;  conciliatory 
measures  for  Ireland,  278  sq. 
Peep-of-Day  Boys  ;  outrages 
by,  i.  146,  218,  302 


350      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IPvELAND 


Peerages  bestowed  as  bribes, 
i.  71,  130,  160 

Pelham,  Thomas,  i.  204,  217. 

Penal  laws  against  Catholics, 
i.  2,  5  sg. ;  their  origin  and 
history,  10  sqq. ;  later  con- 
nivance at  infractions  of  the 
laws,  19;  many  of  the  laws 
gradually  became  obsolete, 
23 

Pension  List  (Ireland)  i.  2 ;  tax 
on  pensions  and  salaries,  3  ; 
profligate  expenditure  on 
pensions,  25  ;  increase  in 
Harcourt's  administration, 
56  ;  amount  in  1793,  130  ; 
statistics  of  placemen  or  pen- 
sioners, lb. ;  their  number 
reduced,  159 

Perceval:  his  anti  -  Catholic 
Ministry,  i.  291 

Perrin,  Attornev-General  for 
Ireland  (1835),' ii.  158 

Petty  Sessions  (Ireland)  estab- 
lished (1823),  ii.  58 

Petty,  Sir  W.:  advocated  leg- 
islative union  (1672),  i.  224 

Pitt,  William :  his  commercial 
propositions  (1785),  i.  85  ; 
desire  for  Parliamentary  re- 
form in  both  countries,  113; 
belief  that  a  commercial 
treaty  would  remedy  Irish 
grievances,  115 ;  dislike  of  the 
Volunteer  Convention,  ib.; 
views  about  Catholic  claims, 
ib. ;  object  of  his  commer- 
cial propositions,  117;  Ire- 
land's contribution  thrown 
on  hereditary  revenue,  and 
in  support  of  navy,  119 ; 
complete  reciprocity  of  trade 
proposed,  120  ;  the  scheme 
carried  in  Irish  House,  121  ; 
hotly  opposed  in  England  : 
Pitt's  modifications  unfa- 
vourable to  Ireland,  122 ;  Bill 
abandoned  in  Ireland,  123  ; 


signs  that  a  legislative  union 
was  already  in  his  mind,  125 ; 
liberal  intentions  towards 
Catholics,  140  ;  a  compro- 
mise with  Westmorland,  143 ; 
Relief  Bill  of  1792,  ib. ;  of 
1793,  148  sq.;  the  Catholic 
question  in  Coalition  Min- 
istry (1794),  162  sq.  ;  Pitt 
alarmed  by  Westmorland's 
reports  from  Ireland,  167; 
hesitation  about  the  *  new 
system'  proposed  by  Port- 
land and  Fitzwilliam,  ib. ; 
instructions  to  the  latter  : 
Lord  Grenville's  Memoran- 
dum, 169  ;  disapproval  of 
Beresford's  dismissal,  192  ; 
recall  of  Fitzwilliam  :  its 
causes,  195;  motives  which 
actuated  him  in  Union  ques- 
tion, 254 ;  later  treatment 
of  Catholic  Emancipation, 
258 ;  negotiations  and  en- 
gagements with  Catholic 
bishops,  260;  King's  refusal 
of  Emancipation,  270  ;  Pitt 
makes  it  the  occasion  of  res- 
ignation. 271 ;  Pitt's  promise 
to  the  King  about  the  Cath- 
olic question,  272  sq. ;  return 
to  office :  opposes  and  defeats 
a  Catholic  proposal,  275 ; 
death  of  Pitt  (1806),  290; 
influence  of  his  oratory  on 
O'Connell,  ii.  206 

Pius  VII.,  Pope :  his  captivity, 
ii.  21  ;  his  approval  of 
Emancipation  Bill  (1813), 
and  of  the  veto,  21  sq. 

Pius  IX.,  Pope:  his  early  Lib- 
eralism, ii.  233 

Placemen  and  pensioners:  had 
to  be  re-elected  to  Parlia- 
ment (1793),  i.  159 ;  some 
of  them  made  ineligible,  ib. 

Plantation  trade  thrown  open 
to  Ireland,  i.  118,  120 


INDEX 


851 


Plunket,  Mr.  :  his  efforts  on 
behalf  of  Catholic  Emanci- 
pation, i.  238,  291  ;  speech 
against  Union,  247  ;  ap- 
proved of  the  veto,  313  ;  the 
Catholic  cause  in  his  hands 
in  1821,  ii.  42  ;  his  Relief 
Bill  rejected,  44  ;  becomes 
Irish  Attorney-General,  ih. ; 
fruitless  prosecution  of 
O'Connell  (1825),  64 

Pocket  boroughs  in  Irish  Par- 
liament, number  of,  i.  81, 
130 

Pole,  Wellesley,  Chief  Secre- 
tary for  Ireland  in  Rich- 
mond Ministry:  suppressed 
the  Catholic  Association 
(1811),  ii.  29;  resigned  his 
office  in  favour  of  Peel,  30; 
became  a  supporter  of  Cath- 
olic claims,  ib. 

Police  force  (.Ireland):  strength- 
ened and  improved  by  Lord 
Wellesley,  ii.  57 

Ponsonby,  George,  i.  178,  207  n. 

Ponsonby,  William,  i.  156, 166, 
207  71. 

Poor  Law  Commission  of  1836: 
on  the  destitution  of  Ire- 
land, ii.  69 

Porter,  ii.  275 

Portland,  Duke  of.  Viceroy  : 
unfavourable  impression  of 
Flood's  character,  i.  69;  de- 
sired to  replace  him  in  the 
Privy  Council,  without  office, 
70;  his  mission  (1782)  to  con- 
cede independence  of  Irish 
Parliament,  102;  distrust  of 
the  Constitution  of  1782, 
110;  in  Whig  Coalition  Min- 
istry, 163 ;  his  views  in  favor 
of  Catholic  Emancipation, 
ih. ;  difficulties  about  Fitz- 
william's  appointment  as 
Viceroy,  165  sqq. ;  change  of 
opinion  on  Catholic  question, 


195;  probable  motives,  204, 
207  n. ;  his  surprise  at  '  def- 
erence '  of  members  '  for  the 
opinion  of  constituents,'  242; 
nominal  head  of  Perceval's 
Ministry,  291 

Potatoes,  importance  of,  in 
Ireland,  i.  24,  ii.  320 

'  Precursors,'  the :  their  objects, 
ii.  222 

Press,  English  :  largely  in 
favour  of  Catholics  in  1825, 
ii.  66,  105 

Pretender,  the  :  secretly  nom- 
inated bishops  to  Irish  Cath- 
olic sees,  i.  22 

Primates  of  Ireland  :  always 
Englishmen,  i.  27 

Prince  Regent  (afterwards 
George  IV.) :  his  deception 
of  Catholic  hopes,  ii.  38; 
dissolution  of  Catholic  Board 
was  due  to  him,  39;  his  re- 
ception in  Dublin  as  George 
IV.  (1821),  ih.;  O'Connell's 
leading  part  therein,  ih. ;  the 
King's  letter  of  thanks,  41; 
his  refusal  to  accept  Catho- 
lic Emancipation,  65;  cause 
of  his  yielding  at  the  last 
moment,  86 

Privy  Councils  of  England 
and  Ireland:  their  powers, 
i.  28  ;  Irish  Privy  Council 
a  more  important  body  than 
the  Parliament,  53  ;  power 
to  alter  or  suppress  Irish 
Bills  given  up,  104;  Grattan 
struck  off,  249  ;  Catholics 
elevated  to  the  Irish  Council, 
ii.  216 

Protective  duties  (Ireland),  i. 
85  sq.,  112  5^. 

QUARANTOTTT,  MoNSIGNOR  : 

manager  of  affairs  in  Roman 
during  captivity  of  Pius 
VII.,    ii.    21  ;    approval    of 


352      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Emancipation  Bill  (1813) 
and  of  the  veto,  &c.,  ih. 
Queen's  Colleges  (Ireland),  es- 
tablishment of  (1845)  :  their 
educational  provisions,  ii. 
281  ;  ecclesiastical  opposi- 
tion, 283 

Radicals,  English  :  many  of 
their  demands  favoured  by 
O'Connell,  ii.  83,  94,  148; 
their  subscription  in  aid  of 
his  parliamentary  expenses, 
117 

Railways  (Ireland)  :  Lord 
George  Bentinck's  scheme, 
ii.  323 

Rebellion  of  1708,  the,  i.  221, 
224;  the  passions  aroused  on 
both  sides,  230 

Redington,  ii.  320 

Reform  (parliamentary)  move- 
ment in  England  :  its  rise 
(1818),  ii.  31  ;  O'Connell's 
services  to  the  Whigs  during 
the  struggle,  ii.  119 

Reform  Bill,  Irish:  what  it  did, 
and  what  O'Connell  thought  it 
should  have  done,  ii.  122  sq. ; 
Irish  representation  before 
and  after  Reform,  122  sqq.\ 
Peel's  forecast  of  character 
of  future  Catholic  members, 
124  ;  G rattan's  belief  that 
they  would  be  a  permanent 
minority.  124  n. ;  O'Connell's 
*  Tail,'  125  sq. ;  Reform  Club ; 
O'Connell  an  original  mem- 
ber, ii.  215 

Regency  controversy,  in  both 
England  and  Ireland,  i.  128 
sq. 

Regium  Donura  (for  Presby- 
terian ministers),  i.  232,  260 

Relief  Act  (Catholic)  of  1793 
criticised,  151  sqq. 

Religious  liberty  :  O'Connell 
on"^  ii.  229  sqq. 


Rents  (Ireland):  difference  be- 
tween what  the  landowners 
received  and  what  the  lowest 
sub-tenants  paid,  ii.  45 

'  Repeal  Missionaries,'  ii.   240 

Repeal  wardens  and  repeal 
police:  their  duties,  ii.  257; 
repeal  arbitration  courts, 258, 
270;  repeal  cavalry,  258 

Revenue,  Commissioners  of  : 
allowed  to  liold  seats  in  Irish, 
but  not  in  English,  House  of 
Commons,  i.  49 

Revolution,  the  French:  its  in- 
fluence speedily  felt  in  Ire- 
land, i.  134 

Rivers,  Irish:  grants  for  im- 
proving navigation  of  (1701), 
i.  286 

Roche,  Father  Philip,  rebel 
leader,  i.  231 

Roden,  Lord  (Episcopalian 
Orangeman),  ii.  227 

Rome,  Court  of  :  repeated  de- 
nunciation of  Queen's  Col- 
leges, ii.  284 

Rowan,  Hamilton,  Curran's 
defence  of,  i.  222  sq. 

Russell,'  Lord  John  :  caused 
abolition  of  Test  and  Cor- 
poration Acts  (1828),  ii.  82 
sq. ;  on  O'Connell's  help  in 
Reform  struggle,  119 ;  de- 
feated Peel  Ministry  on  the 
Appropriation  Clause  (Irish 
Church  revenues),  157;  ex- 
pressed (1844)  desire  for 
complete  equality  of  the 
three  religions,  310;  received 
support  from  O'Connell  in 
his  brief  Ministry  of  1845, 
and  in  that  of  1846,  313,  318 

Ruthmd,  Duke  of,  Viceroy  : 
belief  that  without  a  legisla- 
tive union  Ireland  would 
soon  be  severed  from  Great 
Britain,  i.  Ill ;  on  Pitt's 
suggested    reform    of    Irish 


INDEX 


353 


Parliament,  114  ;  on  Pitt's 
proposed  use  of  hereditary 
revenue,  121  ;  Rutland's 
death,  126 

Sackville,  Lord,  i.  37 

St.  Domingo:  importation  of 
sugar  from,  i.  67 

St.  Omer:  O'Connell  educated 
at,  ii.  3 

Saurin,  Attorney-General  (Ire- 
land) ;  Denunciation  of 
Union,  i.  248;  conflict  with 
O'Connell  in  Magee's  trial, 
ii.  14  sq. ;  O'Connell's  charge 
against  him  of  an  endeavour 
to  pervert  administration  of 
justice,  16  ;  Saurin  believed 
(1812)  that  the  Protestant 
cause  was  lost  in  the  Com- 
mons, 30 

Sceptics :  not  numerous  in  Ire- 
land, i.  298  and  n. 

Scullabogne,  massacre  of,  i.  231 

Seaf ord :  Flood  member  for,  i. 
88 

Senior  :  thought  O'Connell 
wished  a  political  revolution 
to  be  effected  by  an  agrarian 
one,  ii.  260 

Shannon,  Earl  of,  i.  183 

'  Shave-beggars  ' :  application 
of  the  term,  ii.  112 

Sheffield,  Lord:  on  the  rapid 
improvement  of  Ireland 
(1785),  i.  287 

Sheii,  Richard  Lalor :  edu- 
cated at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  i.  156;  in  favour  of 
the  veto,  ii.  21  ;  attack  on 
O'Connell,  41;  his  influence 
in  the  Catholic  Association 
of  1823,  60;  poet  dramatist, 
orator,  61;  character  of  his 
oratory,  ib. ;  made  King's 
Council,  99  ;  long  shrank  from 
repeal  agitation,  108  ;  dislike 
of  O'Connell's  imperiousness, 


ih. ;  accepts  offices  under  Mel- 
bourne Ministry,  220 

Sheridan,  Richard  B. :  resist- 
ance to  Irish  Union,  i.  253 

Shrewsbury,  Earl  of  (Catholic) : 
O'Connell's  attack  on  him, 
ii.  96,  115,  239;  Shrewsbury 
joined  in  address  of  English 
Catholics  to  O'Connell  in 
prison,  271.     See,  too,  323 

'Simple  Repeal'  controversy, 
i.  63  sq. 

Slattery,  Michael  (President  of 
Maynooth,  and  afterwards 
R.C.  Archbishop  of  Cashel): 
educated  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  i.  158 

Slavery :  O'Connell's  opposition 
to,  ii.  94 

Smith,  Adam,  i.  119;  advocated 
legislative  union,  i.  224 

Smith,  Sydney:  his  eulogy  of 
Grattan,  i.  318 

Smuggling  trade  in  wool  (Ire- 
land), i.  25 

Society  for  Promoting  Chris- 
tian Knowledge:  resolution 
against  a  concession  to  Cath- 
olics, i.  295 

Spring  Rice,  i.  282 

Stamp  duties  :  on  land,  ii.  192 

Stanley  of  Alderley,  Lady :  her 
description  of  O'Connell,  ii.  4 

Stanley  (afterwards  Earl  of 
Derby),  Chief  Secretary  to 
Lord  Anglesey:  lifelong  op- 
ponent of  O'Connell,  ii.  113; 
his  scheme  for  national  edu- 
cation (1831-32),  128  sqq. ;  his 
Tithes  Composition  Bill,  131; 
speech  on  Coercion  Bill  of 
1833;  attack  on  O'Connell, 
141  ;  becomes  Secretary  of 
the  Colonies,  ih.;  his  seces- 
sion from  Grey's  ministry, 
148. 

State-aided  emigration,  ii.  184 

Steele,  ii.  84 


354      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Sterling,  Colonel,  editor  of  the 
'Times':  bitter  enemy  of 
O'Connell,  36 

Stone,  Primate,  i.  27,  30 

Stuart  family:  little  liked  by 
the  Irish,  i.  21  sq. 

Subdivision,  extreme,  of  farms 
in  Ireland  :  its  evils,  i.  153, 
ii.  195 

Sugden,  Lord,  Chancellor  (Ire- 
land) :  dismissal  of  magis- 
trates who  were  repealers,  ii. 
254 

Superstitious  in  Ireland  :  of 
milder  character  than  those 
of  England  or  Scotland, i.  301 

Swift,  Dean  :  denunciation  of 
the  Irish  House  of  Commons, 
i.  1;  on  the  exemption  of 
pasture  lands  from  tithes, ?6.; 
on  condition  of  Irish  agri- 
cultural population,  23  ;  the 
Grattans  among  his  list  of 
friends,  94  ;  contemptuous 
estimate  of  Irish  Catholics, 
ii.  19 

Synge  (Protestant  clergyman) : 
urged  perfect  toleration  of 
Catholics  (1725),  i.  296 

Tara,  the  Hill  of:  the  monster 
repeal  meeting  held  there,  ii. 
246,  249 

Tavistock,  Lord  :  on  O'Con- 
n  ell's  refusal  of  the  Master- 
ship of  the  Rolls,  ii.  161 

Taxation,  Irish,  i.  25;  treat- 
ment of,  after  Union,  274  ; 
amount  of  taxes  imposed  on 
Great  Britain  from  which 
Ireland  was  exempted  (1817, 
1845),  278;  final  assimilation 
of  Irish  to  British  taxation, 
ib. ;  taxable  capacity  of  Ire- 
land compared  with  that  of 
England,  279 

Temple,  Earl  (afterwards  Mar- 
quess of  Buckingham),  Vice- 


roy :  dislike  of  Flood's  char- 
acter and  doctrines,  i.  69 ;  on 
the  state  of  Ireland,  ib. ;  be- 
lief that  the  concession  of  leg- 
islative independence  would 
result  in  '  closing  for  ever 
the  accounts  between  the 
two  kingdoms,'  111 

Thurles,  Synod  of  (1850) :  con- 
demned  the  Queen's  Colleges, 
ii.  285 

Tillage :  encouraged  by  bounty 
system,  i.  32 

'Times,'  the:  a  bitter  enemy 
of  O'Connell,  ii.  36;  his  nick- 
name for  the  paper,  37;  it 
charged  O'Connell  with  op- 
pression and  neglect  as  a 
landlord  (1845),  ii.  198 

Tithes  (Ireland):  exemption  of 
pasture  land  from  (Ireland, 
1735),  i.  1  ;  combinations 
against,  125;  Grattan's  ef- 
forts to  reform  the  system, 
127;  Pitt's  suggested  reform, 
ib.',  tithes  were  one  of  the 
chief  sources  of  Irish  crime, 
128;  a  promised  commuta- 
tion, 265  sq.,  273;  evils  of  the 
system,  ii.  47;  Paley's  de- 
scription of  tithes,  ib. ;  its  in- 
equality, ib. ;  tithe-proctors, 
48;  O'Connell's  modification 
of  Tithes  Bill  of  1834,  156; 
Tithe  Commutation  Act 
(1838):  its  provisions  and  ef- 
fects, 169  sq. ;  renewed  at- 
tack on  tithes,  218,  222 

Tithe  War  (1831)  :  O'Connell 
encourages  people  to  refuse 
to  pay  tithes,  ii.  133;  how  to 
evade  or  defeat  the  claim, 2&. ; 
deadly  conflicts  between 
armed  forces  and  the  people, 
ib. ;  Government  undertake 
to  collect  arrears,  ib. 

Tobacco  :  cultivation  per- 
mitted in  Ireland  (1779),  i.  60 


INDEX 


355 


Toland  (an  Irish  sceptic)  :  de- 
nounced from  pulpits  and  his 
book  burnt,  i.  298  ?i. 

Toleration,  instances  of,  by 
Irish  Protestants,  i.  296,  sqq. 

Tone,  Wolfe  :  his  invectives 
on  Irish  Parliament  repro- 
duced by  Macaulay,  i.  285  n. 

Toryism  of  Irish  literature,  ii. 
291  sq. 

Townshend,     Charles,    i.     43, 

96 
Townshend,    Lord  :     estimate 
of  Hely  Hutchinson,  i.  38  ; 
made  LordLieutenant(1767), 
43  ;    character    and    policy, 
ih. ;    octennial    Parliaments 
granted,    44  ;  desire    to  de- 
stroy the  '  undertakers '  sys- 
tem and  power,    45  ;    Aug- 
mentation   of     Irish    Army 
Bill  defeated  by  the  Under- 
takers, 46  ;  Townshend 's  de- 
sire to  appoint  an  Irishman 
as    Chancellor    rejected    by 
England,  ih. ;   efforts  to  ob- 
tain a  Government  majority: 
honours    bestowed  on    sup- 
porters,  47  ;   struggle    over 
Money  Bills,  ib. ;  Augmenta- 
tion Bill  carried,  48  ;  an  ab- 
normal   prorogation,  ih.; 
further  endeavours  to  obtain 
a  Government  majority,  ih. ; 
struggles    with     Opposition 
(1771),   49  ;    Townshend  re- 
called (1772),  ih. 

Trade  union  outrages  (Ireland), 
ii.  185 

Tribute,  the  O'Connell  :  its 
object  and  amount,  ii.  114 
sq. 

Trinity  College,  Dublin  :  Pro- 
vost Hutchinson's  desire  to 
establish  a  Catholic  faculty 
of  theology,  i.  38  ;  its  de- 
grees opened  to  Catholics 
(1793),     ih,,     15G;     distin- 


guished Catholics  educated 
there,  ib.  ;  Grattan's  por- 
trait removed  and  replaced 
by  that  of  Lord  Clare,  250  ; 
supports  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion, 296  sq. 

Troy,  Archbishop  (Dublin)  fa- 
voured union,  i.  256 

Tuam,  R.  C.  Archbishop, 
favoured  union,  i.  267 

Tucker,  Dean  ;  his  pamphlet 
in  favour  of  Union,  i.  228 

Tuke,  Mr.  :  advocate  of  State- 
aided  emigration,  ii.  184 

Turkey  Company  :  Irish  per- 
mitted to  become  members 
of,  i.  62 

Ulster  :  signs  of  growth  of 
French  principles,  i.  146  ; 
some  honest  support  of 
Union  obtained  in,  232  ; 
apathy  of  opponents,  ih.  ; 
'  resistance  to  the  process  of 
the  law '  (1822),  ii.  54  ;  Ul- 
ster tenant-right,  ii.  193 

Ultramontanism  :  its  growth 
in  Ireland,  i.  156,  294 

'  Undertakers,'  the  ;  meaning 
of  the  term,  i.  32  ;  defeated 
Augmentation  of  Army 
Bill,  46 

Union  of  England  and  Scot- 
land (1707):  granted  free 
trade,  i.  5 

United  Irishmen  :  rose  out  of 
embers  of  the  old  Volun- 
teers, i.  83  ;  their  Reform 
Bill,  135  ;  a  memoir  of  their 
rise  and  aims,  mainly  politi- 
cal, 158  ;  why  they  became 
a  disloyal  body,  ih.  ;  pro- 
posed Convention  at  Ath- 
lone,  159  ;  Fitzwilliam's 
failure  gained  them  Catho- 
lic supporters,  204 ;  share 
in  the  outbreak  in  Wexford, 
303 


356      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


University    education :    Irish 
(Catholic),  ii.  286 


Ventura,  Padre  :  preached 
O'Connell's  funeral  oration, 
ii.  325 

Veto  question,  the  :  the  Catho- 
lic (Irish)  bishops'  agreement 
to  allow  the  Government  a 
veto  on  nomination  of  bish- 
ops and  parish  priests  (1799), 
i.  260,  307  ;  arguments  in  its 
favour,  308  ;  the  position  in 
1808,  309;  Ponsonby's  speech 
announcing  the  agreement, 
ib. ;  agitation  among  Catho- 
lics resulting,  ih. ;  protest 
of  democratic  party  in  Ire- 
land :  division  of  Catholic 
interests,  311,  314  ;  incon- 
sistency of  the  bishops,  312  ; 
mischievous  results  of  the 
division  :  another  lost  op- 
portunity, 314  ;  position  of 
Grattan  on  veto,  314  sq. ; 
O'Connell  causes  a  revulsion 
of  clerical  opinion  on  the 
question  :  a  long  struggle, 
ii.  20  ;  the  attitude  of  the 
Court  of  Rome :  Monsignor 
Quarantotti's  decision  in  fa- 
vour of  veto,  21  ;  Pius  VII. 's 
*  peremptory  orders '  to  the 
bishops,  22  ;  the  bishops  re- 
fractory and  ultimately  car- 
ried their  point,  23 

Vicars- Apostolic  (heads  of  Eng- 
lish Roman  Catholics),  i. 
308,  313  ;  seven  out  of  eight 
favoured  Relief  Bill  of  1821, 
ii.  43 

Victoria,  Queen  :  her  acces- 
sion, ii.  167  ;  O'Connell's  at- 
tachment to  her,  211  ;  the 
question  of  her  Ladies  of  the 
Bedchamber,  ib.  sq.,  224  ; 
opposed  to  repeal  of  Union, 


256  ;  kindly  act  towards  the 
dying  agitator,  324 
Vinegar  Hill,  i.  230,  231 
Voluntary  schools  (Ireland)  : 
set  up,  in  opposition  to 
Stanley's  scheme,  by  Estab- 
lished Church  clergy,  ii.  129 
Volunteer  movement,  the  :  its 
rise  and  policy,  i.  58  ;  for- 
mation of  a  Convention,  59  ; 
political  objects  :  attack  on 
restrictions  on  trade,  60  ; 
triumph  of  free  trade  under 
their  influence,  ib. ;  dispute 
between  Grattan  and  Flood 
as  to  the  Convention,  64  ; 
Lord  Charlemont  their  presi- 
dent, 74  ;  their  Reform  Bill, 
drawn  up  by  Flood,  rejected, 
78  ;  the  Convention  ad- 
journed si7ie  die,  19  ;  later 
growth,  dangerous  seditious 
elements,  112  ;  drilling  the 
lower  class  of  people,  chiefly 
Roman  Catholics,  113;  Grat- 
tan's  dislike  of  the  later 
Volunteers,  133  ;  admission 
of  Catholicstotheirranks,  136 

Wages,  Ireland,  i.  3  ;  in  1825, 
ii.  46 

Walpole,  Sir  R.,  i.  285 

Waterford  :  election  of  1826  : 
the  Beresfords'  supremacy 
destroyed,  ii.  79 

Wellesley,  Arthur  (afterwards 
Sir  Arthur  ;  later  Duke  of 
Wellington)  :  speech  on  Re- 
lief Bill  of  1793,  i.  155  ;  Sec- 
retary for  Ireland  (1807)  :  his 
Insurrection  Bill,  i.  306  ; 
opinion  of  serious  state  of 
Ireland,  307  ;  description  of 
a  Tipperarv  election  in  1807, 
ii.  59  ;  (Duke  of  Wellington) 
appreciation  of  power  of 
Catholic  Association  of  1823, 
63  ;  and  of  powerful  oi-gani- 


INDEX 


357 


sation  of  disaffected,  ih. ; 
persistent  opponent  of  Cath- 
olic  claims  :  resigns  oifice 
in  Canning's  Cabinet,  80  ; 
succeeds  Canning  as  Prime 
Minister,  81  ;  his  prediction 
that  O'Connell  would  agitate 
for  non-payment  of  rents,  186 

Wellesley,  Lord,  Viceroy 
(1831)  ;  favourable  to  Catho- 
lic claims,  ii.  44  ;  negotia- 
tions of  O'Connell  for  a  com- 
promise (including  the  veto), 
44  sq. ;  on  the  prevalence  of 
agrarian  crime,  54 ;  his  Tithe 
Composition  Act  (1823),  57  ; 
improvement  of  police  force 
and  revision  of  magistracy, 
ih. ;  establishment  of  Petty 
Sessions  (1823),  58  ;  succeeds 
Anglesey  as  Viceroy  (1833), 
142 

Wesley,  John  :  denounced  the 
toleration  of  Popery,  i.  295 

Westmorland,  Earl  of,  Vice- 
roy (1790)  :  on  the  harmony 
in  the  commerce  of  the  two 
kingdoms,  i.  124  ;  treatment 
of  Catholics,  140  ;  his  oppo- 
sition to  Pitt  and  Dundas's 
proposals  in  favour  of  Catho- 
lics, 142  ;  the  principles  that 
guided  his  administration, 
147  sq. ;  Relief  Bill  of  1793, 
150  ;  alarm  at  nomination 
of  Fitz William  :  Catholic 
question,  160  ;  recalled  and 
made  Master  of  the  Horse, 
168;  appeal  to  Pitt  on  be- 
half of  Beresford  and  Cooke, 
176  ;  use  of  patronage  de- 
partment, 196 

Wexford :  religious  war  in 
(1798),  i.  229  ;  massacre  at 
Wexford  Bridge,  231  ;  R.  C. 
Bishop  favoured  Union,  267 

Whately,  Archbishop  :  on  dan- 
gers of  lax  administration  of 


poor-relief  in  Ireland,  ii. 
182  ;  on  O'Connell's  courage 
before  trade-union  mobs,  218 

Whiteboys,  i.  24  sq. ;  disturb- 
a  n  c  e  s,  125  ;  Fitzgibbon's 
Whiteboy  Act,  127  ;  out- 
rages, 302  ;  class  of  men 
who  perpetrate  them,  ii. 
53  n. 

Whiteside  (Iris  barrister),  ii. 
266 

Whitworth,  Lord  :  on  Irish 
agrarian  crime,  ii.  53 

Wilberforce,  William:  on 
Flood's  eloquence,  i.  89  ;  on 
the  project  of  Union,  228 

Wilde,  William,  ii.  291 

*  Wild  Geese,'  the,  ii.  202 

William  IV.  :  dismissal  of 
Lord  Melbourne's  Ministry, 
in  favour  of  Wellington  and 
Peel,  ii.  153  ;  his  pretext, 
and  his  real  reason,  ih. 

Winchester  :  Flood  purchases 
the  seat,  i.  84 ;  compelled  to 
relinquish  it,    i.  88 

Windham,  Mr.,  i,  167  ;  opin- 
ion of  Grattan,  213 

Window  tax  in  Ireland,  i.  319 

'Witchery  Resolutions,'  the, 
ii.  39 

Witches  ;  few  cases  of  their 
persecution  in  Ireland,  i.  301 

Wolfe,  Arthur,  Irish  Attor- 
ney-General :  made  a  peer 
(Lord  Kil warden),  i.  185 

Wood's  halfpence,  i.  3 

Woollen  trade  of  Ireland,  pro- 
hibition of  export  of  wool, 
manufactured  or  raw,  i,  8 

Wraxall :  on  Flood's  style  of 
elocution,  i.  88  n. 

Wyse,  Sir  T. :  efforts  to  arouse 
Irish  Catholics,  i.  138  ; 
share  in  establishing  the 
Queen's  Colleges,  ii.  282;  ob- 
tains a  Government  office, 
320 


358      LEADERS  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN  IRELAND 


Yelverton,  Lord  (Avonmore)  : 
proposed  repeal  of  Poynings' 
Act,  i.  63  ;  speech  against 
Flood's  Reform  Bill,  77  ;  at- 
tempt to  get  an  Irish  fleet 
established,  110 

Yeomanry  corps  of  Dublin  law- 
yers, ii.  3 

York,  Duke  of  (heir-presump- 
tive) :  declarations  against 
Catholic  Emancipation,  ii. 
43,  71 ;  his  death  (1827),  80 

Young,  Arthur:  on  unpopu- 
larity of  notion  of  Union  in 
Ireland,  i,  228;  on  the  state 
of  agricultural  Ireland,  ii. 
49 

Young  Ireland  movement,  the, 


ii.  164  ;  O'Connell's  quarrel 
with  the  party,  287;  their 
place  in  Irish  journalism, 
289  ;  their  ridicule  of  O'Con- 
nell's mob  oratory,  294  sq. ; 
rejection  of  moral  force 
doctrine,  300  ;  their  orig- 
inal devotion  to  O'Connell, 
lb. ;  glorification  of  the 
sword,  302  ;  the  party  ex- 
pelled from  the  Repeal 
Association,  303  ;  persistent 
hostility  to  O'Connell,  304  ; 
violent  conflicts  with  '  moral 
persuasion'  party,  306  ;  de- 
feat of  Young  Ireland  party 
in  1847  election,  ih,\  chief 
object  of  their  policy,  311 


Date  Due 

M.lv.-So 

. 

PFC  t5  ■ 

^c  "* 

'^'■^'■iiir: 

APR  -5 

1993 

' 

/  ' 

r.  : 

> 

■  J 

^ 

f^^^'Ss^   01638845  6 

205440 


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